It lets us bypass awkward conversations, vote on TV shows, organise meet ups, and been accused of pillaging the English language with acronyms such as LOL and ROFL.

This week the humble Short Message Service, or SMS, also passed a major milestone and turned 20.

Text book case

The first text was sent on December 3 in 1992 by British software programmer Neil Papworth to the Orbitel 901 handset of his friend, Richard Jarvis of Vodafone.

As mobile phones didn't have keyboards at the time Papwork typed out the message on his computer. It simply read “Happy Christmas”. 

Australia was a little later to the game and the nation's first SMS was sent on July 25 1994. However customer-to-customer texting wasn't available until three years later – and only to people using the same network.

It took until April 2000 for inter-carrier texting to become widely available in Australia.

Tapping away

What initially began as a way for Vodafone employees to send short, pager-like messages to one another has since grown into a global phenomenon. 

To celebrate SMS' big day, here a five facts that might come in handy at the next trivia night.

• Eight trillion text messages are sent annually, that's around 15 million a minute.

• SMS remains the most popular way to communicate, with 92% of smartphone users preferring to text. In fact it is the second most common use for smartphones, behind checking the time. 

• 18 – 25 year olds are the most prolific users, sending an average of 133 texts every week.

• Text messages are longer than tweets, and can be a maximum of 160-characters long.

• Texting even has its own Guinness World Record. Sonja Kristiansen of Norway is the current champion, who took 37.28 seconds to compose the following text: “The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality, they seldom attack a human.”

In celebration of the anniversary, it seems fitting to give the last work (or text) to Neil Papworth, who marked the occasion by sending the following text to The Observer.

“IMHO, SMS is still the GR8ST”.

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