The first SMS text message was sent on 3 December 1992.

Key details

  • The message was sent by Neil Papworth, a 22‑year‑old test engineer working for Sema Group Telecoms in the UK.
  • It went from a computer to the Orbitel 901 mobile phone of Vodafone executive Richard Jarvis, because mobile phones could not yet send SMS back.
  • The text of that first message was simply: “Merry Christmas”.

Quick timeline context

  • 1980s: The technical foundations for SMS were developed as part of the GSM (2G) mobile standard.
  • 1992: First live SMS sent on 3 December, marking the practical birth of text messaging as a consumer service.
  • Late 1990s–2000s: SMS takes off globally, becoming a dominant form of person‑to‑person mobile communication and later a channel for marketing and alerts.

Fun side note

Many people assume the first SMS might have been something like “Hello world”, but instead it was a very ordinary holiday greeting, which fits the December 3 timing right before Christmas.

TL;DR: The first text message was sent on 3 December 1992 from a computer to a mobile phone, and it read “Merry Christmas”.

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