"Oops, sorry, I didn't mean to send that text to you!" I'm sure we've all experienced that moment of frustration when we mistyped a number or accidentally replied to the wrong person. I know it's happened to me more than once. Well, we can thank Neil Papworth for that frustration.

On December 3, 1992, Papworth issued the first text message from a computer and sent it to a mobile phone. The message? "Merry Christmas" Unfortunately for the recipient, texting had not been enabled on mobile phones quite yet, so he was unable to respond to the season's greeting.

Texting first entered commercial service in 1993 and gained more traction in 1994. In 1995 our frustrations were made even worse with the invention of predicitve text systems, such as T9. Cross-network compatibility was fully completed in 1999, seven years after the initial message had been issued.

Today we wish texting a happy birthday and hope that it lives a long and full life. I know texting is a staple of what I use my phone for, and I'm sure it's pretty high on most people's lists.