3. The Accidental Discovery of Text

Stephen Fry continues to trace the evolution of the mobile phone.

Now he meets the men who created the first texting facility, as well as other less commercially successful products like taxifones, payphones on trains and in-car fax machines.

He hears how texting triumphed unexpectedly when paging was all the rage, partly because paging services never seemed to work on Friday afternoon.

On the earliest handsets there was no way of replying to a text. Later, just in case someone might want to reply, they included a short list of possible pre-set answers: yes, no and later.

In the mid-1990s, texting was just one of countless facilities embedded within the new digital mobile phones: no one thought it that important.

In 2010 alone, a staggering 6.1 trillion text messages were sent. And most of them received a reply.

Producer: Anna Buckley

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November 2011.