Thirty years ago, on 3 December 1992, engineer Neil Papworth sent an SMS (short message service) to Richard Jarvis on his Orbitel 901 handset. The message simply said “Merry Christmas.”That message from Papworth, who worked as a test engineer working on the SMS service for Vodafone, changed the way the world communicated. Nokia followed suit, becoming the first to introduce messaging to its mobile phones.
The message is now being auctioned as a non-fungible token (NFT), with proceeds to be given to UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, to help the approximately 8.24 million people displaced from their homes by conflict, war and persecution. worked to do. Vodafone is estimated to fetch around $200,000 from this NFT auction. nThe uniqueness of the FT can be gauged from the fact that Vodafone has publicly assured that in future, it will not issue or mint any other NFTs within the scope of the world’s first SMS.
The auction will take place today in Paris and will be conducted by Aguts, the first independent auction house in France. There is also a provision for online bidding for this.To confirm the authenticity of the digital collectible, the buyer will be given a certificate of guarantee signed by Vodafone Group CEO Nick Read, along with a detailed replica of the original communication protocol. In addition, documents sent and received of the message, as well as a copy of the communication protocol, will also be provided to the buyer as TXT and PDF.