In figuring out the number of characters to be allocated for text messages, alone in a room in his home in Bonn, Germany, Friedhelm Hillebrand sat at his typewriter, tapping out random sentences and questions on a sheet of paper.
That became Hillebrand's magic number and set the standard for one of today's most popular forms of digital communication: text messaging.
Before his typewriter experiment, Hillebrand had an argument with a friend about whether 160 characters provided enough space to communicate most thoughts. "My friend said this was impossible for the mass market," Hillebrand said. "I was more optimistic."
How true he was towards all his optimism when text messaging has become the prevalent form of mobile communication worldwide. The biggest youth market of the world i.e India at the moment are sending more text messages than making calls on their cellphones.
Texting has been a boon for telecomms which lead the generation of healthy revenue for the operators where they can easily charge the customers some 20 to 25 cents a message.
Todays mobile phones offcourse are capable of transparently spreading a lengthier message across multiple text messages albeit at a higher cost to customers on most mobile phone plans.