Makkonen
became known as the father of SMS after developing the idea of sending messages
via mobile networks.
The Finnish tech pioneer also
was said to dislike his nickname, pointing out in the few interviews he gave
that the contributions of other engineers were equally, or more important in
developing the Short Message Service standard.
Makkonen pitched the idea of SMS messaging to two colleagues in a
pizzeria while at a telecommunications conference in 1984, but it wasn’t
until December 3, 1992 that the first text message was sent from a PC to a
mobile device via the Vodafone network.
Makkonen
worked for Nokia Networks and Tele Finland, and was CEO of Finnet Oy between
2003 and 2005. In 2008 he was named a winner of The Economist's Innovation
awards, for his work on the message standard.
Unfortunately,
Makkonen wasn’t able to patent the invention of SMS messaging, since it was
only a conceived idea back in 1984. He did win the Economist Innovation
Award in the computing and telecommunications category in 2008 for his work on SMS, though.
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