Why Text Messages Are Limited To 160 Characters

The LA Times has a story about Friedhelm Hillebrand, one of the communications researchers behind efforts to standardize various cell phone technologies. In particular, he worked out the 160 character limit for text messages. "Hillebrand sat at his typewriter, tapping out random sentences and questions on a sheet of paper. As he went along, Hillebrand counted the number of letters, numbers, punctuation marks and spaces on the page. Each blurb ran on for a line or two and nearly always clocked in under 160 characters. That became Hillebrand's magic number ... Looking for a data pipeline that would fit these micro messages, Hillebrand came up with the idea to harness a secondary radio channel that already existed on mobile networks. This smaller data lane had been used only to alert a cellphone about reception strength and to supply it with bits of information regarding incoming calls. ... Initially, Hillebrand's team could fit only 128 characters into that space, but that didn't seem like nearly enough. With a little tweaking and a decision to cut down the set of possible letters, numbers and symbols that the system could represent, they squeezed out room for another 32 characters.

Comments

Re:I'll Be Damned

[rickb928]

Sorry, I lost interest in your post right around 'cell phone'... After that, it was inexplicably uninteresting.

Re:Why text messages instead of email?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree. +1 Insightful GP

Re:I'll Be Damned

[BrokenHalo]

MBAs from what schools?

Not that it's particularly relevant, but a range of Australian universities mostly. Incidentally, Harvard MBA degrees are usually not recognised here as having a value >= toilet tissue.

What I was addressing is the kind of mindset that MBA courses foster, and I can't say I have any answers as to what to do about it.

Re:I'll Be Damned

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get your point. All I read was "I don't get your point. All I read was: "And all this time I was almost certain that it was based on sound scientific research proving that 160 characters was t"

I think he was trying to make a joke about the 160 character limit?

Attention Deficit

[aoheno]

Most people lose their attention after 160 characters.