Did you Know the Interesting Story Behind Limitation of SMS Messages to 160 Characters?? Check it out!
Friedhelm Hillebrand, a person of Bonn in Germany was sitting alone in his own room and in front of his typewriter to tap out questions and sentences in random manner over a particular sheet of paper. As he continued with his work, Hillerbrand counter the actual numbers or digits, numbers of letters, spaces and suitable punctuation marks over the typed page.
During this time, he observed that every blurb continued for about one line or two and always clocked within 160 characters. This fact has then become the magic number of this Germany-based person and thereby he set the standard of 160 characters for SMS messaging activity, recognized as one of the popular types of digital or online communication for majority of marketers and owners of business organizations. Even Friedhelm had recalled his thinking during the epiphany taken place during the year 1985 as, “Setting 160 characters for SMS messages is perfect and sufficient for messaging purposes.”
Large numbers of communications researchers, along with dozens of other people have laid out for formulation of plans to allow standardization of a technology, which would help mobile or cell phones in transmission and display of varying SMS messages. In addition, since the bandwidth constraints of different wireless networks remained tight at that time, which were usually less for car phones; every message would comprise of shortest length as possible.
Before the experiment performed by Friedhelm with the help of his typewriter, he had undergone with an argument with his friend about the spacing available for SMS messages. Here, he argued with his friend and opined that 160 characters give adequate space to users in communicating majority of thoughts. Friedhelm Hillerbrand commented, “My friend perceives the space of 160 characters for texts was impossible for bulk market; however, I was highly optimistic with my opinion.”
Optimism of Hillerbrand had remained clearly over the mark. Hence, SMS messaging has later become one of the prevalent forms of mobile communication in different parts of the world. Currently, majority of people located in developed countries, like United States and United Kingdom and developing countries, like India and Brazil are using SMS messages at higher rate as compared to making calls with the help of mobiles, as revealed in reports of Nielsen Mobile during last year. According to the update, American mobile users sent about 357 texts in one month as compared to making 204 calls on an average.
Friedhelm Hillerbrand gained huge confidence after performing his unscientific type of investigations. He was the chairperson of various non-voice services and committees within GSM i.e. Global System for Mobile Communications, the company responsible for setting suitable standards for large numbers of international mobile market. Thus, Hillerbrand forwarded the entire group plan related to SMS messages in the year 1986. Every cellular carrier and mobile phone, decreed by the company provides proper support to the short messages or SMS services. Lastly, Hillebrand introduced the creative idea towards harnessing of secondary type of radio channel, which already exists over different types of mobile networks.
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