The world’s first text message was yesterday auctioned off for £90,000.
Sent in December 1992 and saying ‘Merry Christmas’, the text was sold by Vodafone.
Neil Papworth, Engineer sent an SMS to Richard Jarvis from his computer. Richard Jarvis received the message on his Orbitel Cordless Telephone.
In December 1992, Neil Papworth sent the first ever text message from his computer to Richard Jarvis. He simply wrote “Merry Christmas” and it was received by over a million people.
‘They were in the middle of end-of-year events so he sent him the message “Merry Christmas”,’ said Maximilien Aguttes of the Aguttes auction house in Paris.
Nokia launched the SMS system one year later on their handsets.
The text was sold as a non-fungible token – a type of digital asset.
Each NFT can be unique, and include text, images and/or video.
Neil Papworth (pictured), a 22 year-old British programmer, sent Richard Jarvis the first SMS from a computer on December 3, 1992.
A replica of the SMS protocol will be sent to the buyer who requested anonymity.
The proceeds will be donated to the United Nations Refugee Agency.
France does not allow the sale of intangible goods. Aguttes stated that the auction house packaged the message text in a digital frame and displayed the code and protocol.
Among those in the auction hall was 18-year-old blockchain entrepreneur Luigi Caradonna, who bowed out of bidding when the price rose above £63,000.
‘I thought it would be interesting to have this piece of history to hold it as an asset until next year and to sell it next Christmas,’ he told AFP.