[ajk511]

Originally Posted by Link9228

According to an article I read, the 160 characters was a limit created back in the 80s when wireless networks didn't have much data to work with.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_messaging


History

Many companies have claimed to have sent the very first text message, but according to a former employee of NASA, Edward Lantz, the first was sent via a simple Motorola beeper in 1989 by Raina Forteni from New York City to Melbourne Beach, Florida using upside down numbers that could be read as words and sounds. The first SMS typed on a GSM phone is claimed to have been sent by Riku Pihkonen, an engineer student at Nokia, in 1993.
Initial growth of text messaging was slow, with customers in 1995 sending on average only 0.4 messages per GSM customer per month.[1] One factor in the slow take-up of SMS was that operators were slow to set up charging systems, especially for prepaid subscribers, and eliminate billing fraud which was possible by changing SMSC settings on individual handsets to use the SMSCs of other operators. Over time, this issue was eliminated by switch-billing instead of billing at the SMSC and by new features within SMSCs to allow blocking of foreign mobile users sending messages through it. By the end of 2000, the average number of messages per user reached 35