The "father of SMS", Matti Makkonen, dies at 63

Portia Arthur

June 30, 2015 3:40 PM

The great investor, Matti Makkonen did not receive any money from the invention, because he did not apply for a patent

Matti Makkonen

The cellphone world is grieved today with the sadden passing away of the great inventor of text messaging, Matti Makkonen. The globally recognised father of SMS (Short message Service), died from an illness at the age of 63.

The Finnish creator pitched the concept of text messaging over cellular networks in 1984 and helped get the ball rolling on the technology in its earliest days. He was quick to downplay his involvement and saw SMS as a "joint effort" between many people (Friedham Hillebrand developed the 160-character format in 1985, for example), but much of the initial credit belongs to him.

Makkonen's work has spread far and wide. SMS has started to decline as instant messaging apps like Twitter, Facebook and others but it is still ubiquitous. Twitter's roots are in SMS (hence that 140-character limit).

SMS is a vital communication medium in areas where mobile Internet access is too expensive.

The Finnish tech pioneer, while alive said he dislike his nickname, pointing out in the few interviews he gave that the contributions of other engineers were equally, or more important in developing the Short Message Service standard.

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Portia Arthur