The Remarkable History Of Instant Messaging

The very notion of being able to instantly send a message to someone located on the other side of the world – or even just the other side of one’s home or office – would have seemed nigh-on inconceivable to most of the world’s population not so long ago.

- Benjamin Kerry & Gavin Lenaghan

HOW THIS SIMPLE TECHNOLOGY CONTINUES TO BRING MORE OF US TOGETHER

And of course, instant messaging is a concept that only became mainstream a few decades ago, within easy living memory for many of us. However, the concept has also come so far already in terms of what it represents and makes possible for so many people. Indeed, it continues to develop in remarkable ways – and as we shall see, offers scope for an enthralling future, too.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE HUMBLE INSTANT MESSAGE

Before we go any further in exploring what instant messaging now is and where it has the potential to go in the future, we need to establish where it has come from.

Naturally, the starting point in explaining the history of instant messaging depends on what we define instant messaging as essentially being. But if we define it as being basically about messages being sent and received by someone in a different location within, at most, minutes, rather than the weeks that it formerly took to send messages by train and horse, there’s no doubt that the first ‘instant message’ was the first telegram.

That telegram was sent by Samuel Morse, the message in question – “What hath God wrought?” from the Book of Numbers – traveling from Washington D.C. to Vail, Maryland.

And with that, the human appetite was whetted for a whole new world of immediate communication that eventually helped to bring into being the telephone, radio, fax, pager and other technologies that we would go on to take for granted.