For millennia, humankind has sent information through the air to deliver urgent messages that would otherwise be irrelevant if enough time passed. One of the first attempts at instant messaging would be via smoke signals or drumbeats which would be immediately seen or heard from miles away, warning villages of imminent attacks or other urgent matters. While this early technological invention may have worked in some ways, it was not effective in delivering personalized messages and had a ton of other limitations.
Other relatively ancient messaging methods were pigeons and pony express. As recently as World War II, pigeons and messengers on horseback were being used to deliver messages between war camps. Still, these too had major setbacks as they could be intercepted before getting to the intended source. While these technologies were helpful for their time, it was the invention of electricity in the 1800s that revolutionized messaging technology.
The Internet is One of the Biggest Gamechangers for All Tech
Then came the internet about 2 centuries later, which led to incredible milestones for how we send and receive messages. Messaging aside, the internet also did wonders for sectors like the casino, eliminating the need for traveling for hundreds of miles just to enjoy casino games. Through platforms like the GG bet casino, players can enjoy tons of gambling games right at the comfort of their homes or on the go via mobile devices.
Back to messaging, we cannot just jump into the evolution of modern messaging tech without starting at the beginning – the telegraph:
The Electric Telegraph
The invention of the telegraph in 1844 enabled man to send messages over long distances using coded pulses of electricity through electric wires between stations. Over the years, the telegraph underwent some improvements. The most notable contributions were by scientists such as Cornell with good insulation for telegraph wires and Edison with his Quadruplex system that allowed for four messages to be transmitted using the same wire.
Before being overtaken by more modern messaging means, telegraphy was considered the most popular form of long-distance communication and was being used as recently as 2006 in the US and 2013 in India. It is still possible to send a telegram right now but not necessarily for convenience purposes.
Telephone
Building on the telegraph, the idea of transmitting human speech via electric wires came to fruition in 1875. How does human speech transmission relate to messaging? Unlike the telegraph, whose functionality and methodology remained more or less the same, the telephone has since undergone major strides in directions that could not have been conceived at the time of its invention.
It was the Trans-Atlantic underwater telephone cables in 1956 that facilitated the ultimate connection of the entire globe. Soon, scientists were toying around with the idea of transmitting more than just voice messages over the telephone or other devices.
Messaging
With the invention of real-time instant messaging in the 1960s and early online chat systems like Talkotomatic in the 1970s, people could exchange written messages (or chat), and characters could be read as they were being typed.
In 1984 the idea of sending short messages over a telephone network was conceived, but it was 8 years later, in 1992, that the first actual SMS was sent to a phone from a computer. Then, in 1993, Nokia became the first handset manufacturer to make an SMS-capable phone and ‘text on nine keys,’ T9 was later developed to enable users to send text messages by pressing a number key. From there, the spiral to today’s messaging tech accelerated at lightning speed.
With the incorporation of the full QWERTY keyboard into a mobile phone, the ability to send messages between different cellular networks and the introduction of emoticons into the SMS world, humanity had reinvented the art of rapid information transfer.
The Internet and Smartphones
While instant messaging (IM) is not a new concept, the internet and the invention of smartphones set a new standard for how messages would be sent through different channels. Unlike the olden days when users would sign in and hope that their friends were also signed in on the other side, today, IM users can tell whether the other person is online and even get a ‘read receipt’ to see if their message was read. It has since evolved from such platforms as MSN to modern mobile messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.
Parting Shot
Today, messaging has become more popular than making phone calls, as they allow users to engage throughout the day with family members or colleagues at little to no cost. On top of that, technology will enable users to privately share messages that are impossible to intercept because of encryption. With the introduction of temporary messaging where messages automatically get deleted after being read, we can only imagine what’s in store for us in the coming years.
