Why text messages are limited to 160 characters
Did you know that the average postcard sent home contains only 150 characters?
In 1985 a researcher in Germany, Friedhelm Hillebrand, practiced typing out blurbs, or short questions and answers, on his typewriter and he was able to always get the point across in 160 characters or less. So he set out to make that the standard length for the text-messages that we all use today.
The technology at the time only allowed them to fit 128 characters in, but knowing what he knew, he did everything he could to
squeeze in an extra 32 characters, to bring it to the 160 characters that we are all familiar with today. Twitter, is limited to 140 characters, due to space being needed for the person’s username… and I think we all do a pretty good job of getting the point across in even that limited space!
Here is this article over at the Los Angeles Times.
Oh.. and can you figure out who wrote the postcard that I am using for an example?
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I assumed that it was because when most people reach 161 words they haven’t been paying enough attention to driving to avoid a major wreck.
Did you know that the amount of music available on the first compact discs was determined by the developer’s love of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony? He wanted to be able to put a complete recording of the symphony on one disc.
Why text messages are limited to 160 characters :?:
The real answer is: TO ENCOURAGE LAZINESS :!:
WHAT A LOAD OF BS! I get sick and tired of this myth being spread. Funny it surfaces in the news about every 4 to 6 years. :evil: No individual expert or company can claim to be the ‘father’ or ‘creator’ of the SMS. The GSM project as a whole was indeed a multi-national collaboration at its best.
The article states outright that the 160-character limit came before Hillebrand’s “typewriter experiment” and that the experiment actually came about because of an argument between Hillebrand and a coworker about whether 160 characters was sufficient for a sensible message.
This meshes with what we already know about SMS, namely that it could never have been much more than 128 characters for technical reasons. For those that were wondering how they got 160 characters into 128 bytes (6.4 bits/char), they didn’t. They dropped letters.
- LAT-
"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."Why does the article structures it’s opening to suggest that Hillebrand pulled the number out of his arse after some typewriter time is a mystery.
As history has proven time and time again, you can’t believe everything you read especially from LA Times. Oh and that goes for what I say also. Don’t believe one word I type! Look it up! :cool:
What do I know about this SMS? I was typing 80 character messages on punch cards. Not related, but if you take to punch cards end on end you get 160 characters. :shock:
Good morning Captain,
Quiz:
What are the other two names for “punch card” and which one is more correct. One of my customers many years ago insisted on calling the punch card by its correct name and it wasn’t the other popular name containing that big company name. :grin:
Punched card or punch card as some people called it. I learned is at the Hollerith card but it was much different from the Standard 5081 card… Or one could call it the “EVIL IBM CARD!” :twisted: If we ever called it an IBM card one would get punched in the arm or slapped behind the head.
BTW as I was programing the card puncher to feed directly to the schools first ever Apple II computer. I’m so very glad our vice principle was a computer geek. I might not have gotten into computers if it wasn’t for him. Heck if it wasn’t for computers I would still be struggling with mathematics and English syntax. Oh that dreaded ‘Syntax Error’!!!! :evil: Wow, Im just remembering I learned so much information that is so useless and outdated. What a waste of brain cells. :neutral:
Ok Im off to bed. I have a maritime organization meeting at about 9 am. I need some sleep.
You are correct – Hollerith card.
So, you’ve been in the same situation as I have been where if you called it an IBM card, you got punched in the arm very quickly.
hey karl. sometime ago someone linked these sites that present hotforwords.com statistics. since you are much more familiar with statistics, how reliable is the data? are there other sites that you use that you could recommend?
quantcast
alexa
Hi buzzword,
The data is very reliable and accurate, but it depends on how the data is measured. For example, go to Quantcast, then enter “yahoo.com”. Notice above the graph it says, “Rough Estimate”. That means “yahoo” is not a customer of QC. Now, enter “hulu.com” See the difference? Hulu is a customer of QC and the data is measured directly via scripts, logs, cookies, etc.
The companies that provide data for free are few. You can check out Compete.com, Coremetrics.com, ShinyStat.com, AboutUs.org, Google and Yahoo. Buzzwords <– :grin: to search for is KPI which is “Key Perfomance Indicators”, web metrics and web analytics.
If you want to find out about a specific company, then look at the cookies as it will give a clue as to who they use for tracking. For example, go to Sears.com, then check the cookies. You’ll come across companies like Omniture.com and Hubspot.com and various advertising and marketing companies. Mostly, access to their data is not free.
Another source of stats is the big database companies such as Forrester, Hoovers, Forbes and many others. These companies issue reports for as little as $100s to well over $2000 for specific companies in a specific industry.
:smile: cafeteria staff uses those over at the hotforwords forums, cafeteria cards. you buy a meal card and each time you get lunch the staff punches a punch hole in the card. oh, and there’s also punch over there too, fruity drinks.
Hey Captain Jack,
I understand your criticisms, but I’m not sure that I agree.
Nowhere did I see the use of the words “father” or “creator” of SMS in the article and Hillebrand is getting no royalties.
I personally do not have a problem with the article as it needs to be taken into context. As the article states;
“Hillebrand… as chairman of the nonvoice services committee within the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), a group that sets standards for the majority of the global mobile market, he pushed forward the group’s plans in 1986.”
The article makes it clear as you stated that the 160 character possibility existed (punch card 80+80), but it was not clear if the 160 characters was useful form of communication. That is the crux of the article. Hillebrand and his team utilized three known pieces of data that convinced his team that 160 characters was sufficient.
1. Postcards – typically 150 characters
2. Telex – same as postcards
3. Email – subject line and a few lines of text
Perhaps the article was not written as precisely as you and I might write it and I would agree with you on that.
heres why you dont pay so much for a iphone…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQJlJf_qcC8&feature=player_embedded
What the hell does any of that have to do with 160 characters these days?
I read somewhere that SMS uses a 7bit character set to get 160 characters per transmission but the reason why it’s only 160 characters is because they squeeze SMS into header data that costs the telephone companies nothing because they send that data anyway!
So 25 cents per message or the $20 u pay for unlimitted text messaging is 100% profit because the telephone companies are sending the data anyway.
We are all suckers.
Thanks my teacher for helping me i love you
What a hoot :!: Timothy Leary. I read his book during my more impressionable years in the ’60′s….no wait, it must have been 1970. I took to psychedelics pretty well, except acid. On my first trip, I didn’t even know I was taking it. I was doped. The person
who doped me advised me to flow with it. On another acid trip, the trees were angry with me, although they weren’t able to move around or talk like the Ents in Fangorn forest (Lord of the Rings).
Leary escaped from jail. What is the story there? Anyone know?
Hi Marina, we would like you to know that we realized a little special about your site and videos in our magazine dubbed “Vite Re@li” on italian tv Rai4. You can watch the whole episode clicking here: http://www.vitereali.tv/puntate/puntata-n-25/
Hello vitereali,
That’s a long video in a language I do not understand. Can you tell me at what time(s) they mention this site and videos?
Thanks.
@hs4mm: it’s italian language.
They talk about hot4words.com site and about Marina Orlova.
They start mentioning them @ 12 minutes.
Thanks. Also, the site has a bio at http://www.vitereali.tv/web-celebrities/hot-for-words-marina-orlova/ — says something about being ‘most wanted’!
“Marine Orlova is a university professor of ironic English sexy and, a filologa. It gives lessons of English language in video, but strizzando the eye to the grammar, the etimologia and its two lauree in instruction of the Russian and English, both with specialization in filologia. Its channel on youtube is classified “1st most viewed Guru” and it is found between the `most wanted’.”
Urgh. That looks suspiciously like an automatic (rather than human) translation…
In one of my recent classes, part of our “big project” at the end of the semester was an outline of five historiography books that we had read. She had us on a grading scale based on volume. 15,000 words A. 14,500 A- etc. Her reasoning was more work was more information. That seemed backwards to me; the best outline will have fewer words.
Did Abe Lincoln say something about this in relation to speech writing? Anyone can write a two hour speech, but if you can write your speech, to say what you want in fifteen minutes, then you have accomplished something. Makes sense to me.
Honest Abe was a country boy. Folks in the country have a saying,” why use two words when one will due, and why use one when a grunt will do.”
There is another one,” Anybody who talks that much has got to be lying sometime.” Now, if you’ll excuse me. :wink:
robin, to the forum-mobile
I also immediately got Tim Leary. So Marina, are you a merry prankster?
Timothy Leary … farout!
Does the character limitation include nonprintable (invisible) characters? Especially whitespace sets such as spaces, or if applicable, newline etc.
Character count:
138 (not incl. spaces) – tweetable
158 (incl. spaces) – non-tweetable, start whittling your sentence down
what? no video?
I’m finally have an idea on one of these, and it is not a GTWG.
Timothy Leary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_TbovyVOzs&feature=related
Love those 1970′s haircuts!
:mrgreen: That’s way far out psychedelic experience ~ man that’s groovy :!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnLgxC8apqk&feature=related
Reminds me of the Filmore East night club in NYC in the early 1970′s.
:idea: could very well be the place. lightshows are still going on :arrow:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLOvVKXEm1o
Just got home. Before I scroll down, I’ll make a swag that it’s Timothy Leary.
Sorry, the person who wrote that postcard is not Miles Gilbert “Tim” Horton. He was too busy playing hockey and drinking coffee to write this postcard. :roll: :cool: :shock: :razz:
The real reason the texting limit is 160 chars is that it was found that the suicide rate of those receiving msgs longer than that went way up. The mind can stand just so much inane dreck before it melts down and the reader’s brain liquifies into a puddle of goo that a even a dog wouldn’t lick up (and that’s saying something!).
BTW, M’s text for this blog is over 400 chars., so that blows the “I can say anything in 160 chars” theory.
:mrgreen: funny!
“Dreck” – I like that, CampKohler.
Is Timothy Leary the guess the word game?
If you need more than 160 characters to say something, then you’re in need of a personal blog. :-)
Text messaging was limited to 160 characters because 160,000,000 characters took up too much space and most people did not have a whole lot to write about. However, text storytelling is a whole different story… more about this later! :shock: :razz:
HW: The only reason I have heard of Timothy Leary is that sometime back I looked at crossword puzzles and his name is used in crossword puzzles.
Anyway, what fascinates me is that the displayed postcard has 157 characters (counting the white space but not counting the carriage returns)! Here’s a transcription of the postcard, preserving the spelling (errors) and somewhat preserving the whitespace:
Dear Frinds
Tripping around
Middle East grooving
with the guorillas. ...
New life. Fabulous
adventures. We are
happy that you are
happy. Love
Timothy
With counting carriage returns, one can write it in under 160 characters by adjusting the white space.
My wife is on the phone to her mother in Thailand; she can do 160 words without drawing a breath!
The wire to Thailand is so long that you need 160 chars just to fill it up so the person at the other end can start hearing something. It’s like a garden hose. :mrgreen:
Someone must have put a kink in it somewhere; that would account for her always shouting when on the phone. :grin:
Is she Thai? I’ve known a few Thai and even when they are laughing and talking, it still sounds full of rage!
BTW, if you’re wanting someone to ‘watch your back’, find a Thai. Very fierce and VERY loyal to friends!
Except when her friends start hitting on me – VERY fierce and not at all friendly.
I’ve seen it written that the Chinese pictogram for “happiness” is made up of the pictogram for a woman within the pictogram for a house.
For “trouble” it’s two pictograms for woman within a house and for “cacophony” it’s three women in a house.
Experience leads me to believe that this story is true. :smile:
Bob, you gotta introduce me to some of your wife’s friends…
Umm … for what purpose? Adultery or Skullduggery? :razz: :lol:
Tomfoolery, mostly I guess. :roll:
Bob, I think the 160 words (or more) in one breath is “a girl thing”, don’t you? Genetic imprint or something?
Maybe … just like opening our mouths and putting our feet in it is a man thing. :oops: :smile:
I’ve never gotten close to 160 or received one that long.
The post card is definately from somebody named Timothy. Look at that picture of my man Friedhelm though, really Moody like someone was dead.
Damn! I should have known Leonard would be all over that. Thats what I get for not reading the comments :oops:
Yep. Shoulda looked at the recipient’s names, too. But then everyone knows, “If you can remember the sixties, you probably weren’t really there.” Oops, gotta go!
Dear Marina, when I was away at University, I would type postcards, so I would get up to 300 words on one. They were cheaper than sending a letter. Due to bandwith limitations, I see why there are arbitrary limits on the amount you may text on Twitter or a cellphone.
Apparently, the writer of that postcard is Timothy O’Leary.
A century ago, people would send costly telegrams that cost several cents per word. So abbreviations and shortcuts were very common. For example, “ANACIN HOSPITAL. ADAMANT BITTER ASININE PLACES.”
(Yes, it says Ann is in the hospital. A damn ant bit her ass in nine places.”)
Abbreviations can be fun.
Seesixcm6
One company in the 1800s sold huge dictionaries of words to be used in telegrams to save money. For example, “chair” could be sent and the receiver would look it up in the book (he had to buy one also) to find that it meant, “When I said send me a blonde, I meant a natural one, you incompetant ninny.”
Even today, when bandwidth is no longer a concern, codes are still used for clarity. The scrap metal industry has a list of metals and their particulars (limits on oil, dirt and foreign metals mixed in and so forth). As an example, “talk” is clean air conditioner evaporators and condensers made from copper tubing and aluminum fins*. The words have no significance; they just went down the list from A-Z, assigning them to various metals and grades.
———
*Talk is one of the reasons California just implemented a law requiring those purchasing it get IDs, photos and so forth; air conditioners at schools, etc. were being ripped apart in the middle of the night, causing great economic damage to owners for a few pounds of metal.
If you are interested, the list is at http://www.isri.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Commodity_Specifications&Template=/TaggedPage/TaggedPageDisplay.cfm&TPLID=128&ContentID=7763. (I couldn’t get the link to work in the above msg.)
:smile: And I thank you :lol:
Thats a hell of a racket! Make up your own language and then be the only way to get a dictionary. Can you imagine if somebody made up a, I don’t know, maybe a whole BELIEF system and then have the only books to interpret it. You could have your own country and call it a city. Man, you would have more money than Go….oops!
i think somebody beat me to it
As per the tweet-box at twitter.com, twitter’s 140 characters includes the recipient’s @username — so people with smaller usernames can get longer messages! For example, a message to @hotforwords is restricted to 127 characters — but a message to @hfw can have 135 characters.
PS: Since tweets are broadcast to all, the 20 characters twitter reserves must be for the sender’s information.
Great little article Marina.
I knew some, but not all of those details.
Excellent!!
Karl is a worker :cool: :razz: :cool: Tags: Ðрефьева Ольга Ðрефьева arefieva…text of test books…I’m a SLaVe=slOvE :???:
I say Tim Ferris…
Timothy Leary
Looks like Timothy Leary turning on, tuning in, and dropping out…
Timothy Leary? PhD writer, etc Mr LSD
moody blues…tim leary is dead :wink:
Well done,Leonard – you beat me to it. :smile:
:twisted: :arrow: horse hay…electric quack…purple of air and roots for winter…law=love+love&personalaw :?: thanks to the house of HOT***FOR***WORDS+++and inhabate-tants of tents :lol:
Answer is correct; well almost – he wasn’t Irish – his name was Timothy Leary.
The postcard was for sale on eBay in January.
Up early…………:-)…I enjoy what I learn and I thank you miss MARINA..