Matti Makkonen, Father of SMS technology passes away

July 1, 2015

Finnish telecom engineer and father of messaging service (SMS) technology Matti Makkonen passed away following serious illness. He was 63.
In 1984, he had pioneered the idea of sending messages via mobile networks but failed to patent it was merely idea and was not actual implementation.

About Matti Makkonen

Matti Makkonen was born on 16 April 1952 in Suomussalmi, Finland. He had graduated as an electrical engineer from the Oulu technical college in 1976.
He had started his career at Telecoms and Postal agency (PTL) as a systems engineer from (1976–1983). He had served as vice president of PTL and was actively involved in the development of the GSM-technology from 1984 to 1988.
In 1989, he was appointed as President of the mobile communication unit which was later renamed as Telecom Finland.
In 2008, for his work on SMS he was awarded The Economist’s Innovation Award in the computing and telecommunications category.

Interesting facts

The first text message was sent via the Vodafone network from a computer to a mobile device in December 1992.
In 1994, Nokia became first mobile manufacturer to introduce phone i.e. Nokia 2010 to write and send SMS.

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