The Man Who Pitched The Idea Of Text Messaging Matti Makkonen Is Dead.

You’ve probably never heard of Matti Makkonen, so the news that he has died at the age of 63 might not elicit particularly strong feelings.


But Finnish engineer Makkonen had a true claim to being one of the fathers of modern communication – he was the man behind text messages.

It was Makkonen who, back in 1984, pitched the idea of sending strings of text via mobile phones – although the first message wasn’t actually sent until 1992.