Veda #3 : Why Only 160??

Day 03
Question by : none - "Why i can only type 160 characters when i'm sending text message?"

Have you ever experience something like this : you want to talk about things with your friends, families, or colleagues, then you're texting them, trying to explain something, but unfortunately the text has reached its limit at 160 characters?
why only 160 you asked? (or in this case, i'm the curious one). There seem to be varying stories about the history of SMS, some say it’s the amount of characters on a typical postcard, yeah right, based on the research, most of the postcard sent contain about 150 letters, more or less. But i'm not talking about postcard tonight, hoho, maybe some other time, i'll find the answers.


Now, we know who resposible for the limitation. Once at 1985, a Germany named Friedhelm Hillebrand sat in front of his typewriter, alone in a room in his home in Bonn, and typing randomly several questions, and random things that came across his mind. He then realized that he was never type or use letters more than 160 characters. (my question is : why did he do that?don't he had something to do beside counting the letters?).

Friedhelm Hillebrand

Anyway, based on that magic number, he asked all the GSM carriers at that time to use 160 as texting limit. He could do that because, unfortunately, his position as the chief of non-voice services comittee of Global System for Mobile Communication Group at 1986. This format is still used up until now and being used by one of the social networking site, Twitter. (what?you want to know why Twitter use this number too?)

Here's a hint or quick tip for you who want to text someone about something long (err...referring to the long story, not the story about long thing) and doesn't want to be trapped with this limitation, use this : "call me!important!" :p

Satisfied? :)