The first text message ever sent read: “Merry Christmas.”

Quick Scoop: What was the first text message ever sent?

  • Date: December 3, 1992.
  • Sender: 22‑year‑old engineer Neil Papworth, working for Vodafone in the UK.
  • Recipient: His colleague Richard Jarvis, who was at a Vodafone Christmas party.
  • Device used: Sent from a computer to an Orbitel 901 mobile phone over the Vodafone network.
  • Message content: “Merry Christmas.”

Phones at the time could receive texts but couldn’t send them back yet, so it was a one‑way message that didn’t even get a reply—but it kicked off the SMS revolution that led to billions of texts being sent every day.

Tiny timeline

  1. 1992 – First SMS: “Merry Christmas.”
  1. 1993 – Nokia adds SMS with a signature “beep” for new messages.
  1. Early years – 160‑character limit leads to “txt spk” like LOL and emoticons, which later inspired emojis.

A simple two‑word holiday greeting quietly became the starting point of modern mobile messaging.

Meta description:
Learn what the first text message ever sent said (“Merry Christmas”), who sent it, when it was sent, and how that tiny SMS in 1992 sparked today’s global texting culture.

TL;DR: The first text message ever sent was “Merry Christmas,” sent on December 3, 1992, by engineer Neil Papworth from a computer to a Vodafone mobile phone.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.