On the occasion of the anniversary of SMS, its creator gave an interview - via SMS

The first SMS was sent on December 3, 1992, but the concept engineer, Finnish engineer Matti Makkonen, came up with eight years before. He rarely gives interviews, but he agreed to answer BBC questions via SMS.

Although called Makkonen as the father of SMS, he still reluctantly agrees with this, saying that this is “the result of the joint effort of gathering ideas and writing specifications”. In addition, he did not believe that the idea was worth the patent, so he did not receive a penny for his invention, despite its enormous prevalence.

“20 years ago, SMS did not seem to me to be anything special — it was just one of the possibilities of the revolutionary mobile communication system. Very useful for urgent business needs, ”says Makkonen.
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Makkonen refrains from using SMS slang (txtspk), saying: "I like to write in the correct language (in Finnish), using all 160 characters." He does this on a modern touchscreen phone, although he could not refrain from a dubious compliment, noting that they are “slow enough so that you can think and sometimes even correct what I'm writing.”