World's first SMS to be auctioned in Paris

TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

The world's first SMS is being auctioned as a digital piece of history on Tuesday, reports dpa international.

The Short Message Service (SMS) item is going under the hammer at the Aguttes auction house in Paris as a non-fungible token (NFT), meaning it has a digital certificate of authenticity and is considered the original.

Whoever has the code - secured by blockchain technology - will verifiably be the digital owner of the SMS.

Vodafone programmer Neil Papworth sent the message in December 1992 to a colleague who received it while he was at the company Christmas party.

The message reads "Merry Christmas."

Such digital certificates are gaining in popularity: The NFT of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's first tweet was sold for 2.9 million dollars at auction earlier this year, while Tim Berners Lee's first source code for the World Wide Web fetched 5.4 million dollars.

The auction proceeds for the SMS are likely to be much lower. The auction house expects a range of 100,000 to 200,000 euros (113,000-226,000 dollars).

Development manager Maximilien Aguttes is still hoping for a higher final bid though.

"This first text message received in 1992 is a historic testament to human and technological progress," Aguttes said.

Vodafone is the seller of the NFT and plans to donate the proceeds to the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

For legal reasons, the winning bidder will receive tangible assets along with the SMS, including a digital picture frame to display it in.

Despite alternatives like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, the programmer, who sent the first SMS in 1992, believes in a future for the SMS.

"SMS was declared dead 20 years ago, but it is still here - und it will still be here in the future," Papworth, 51, told dpa in Montreal.

"Next year the SMS will be 30 years old, and after that I guess we will also be celebrating its 40th birthday."