In October 1984, as the market for mobile phones was just opening up, one man decided it would be useful if the new technology could be used to send and receive short, electronic messages.

But colleagues of Friedhelm 'Fred' Hillebrand - an engineer for Germany's Deutsche Telekom - told him the system's 160-character limit for text messages rendered it "useless".

After spending an evening typing-up birthday, Christmas and fax messages Fred proved them wrong, and within 20 years the SMS or short message service had changed the way we communicate around the world.

Fred Hillebrand tells Jacqueline Paine how text messaging very nearly didn't take off until it was discovered by young people.

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(Photo: News message on a mobile phone display. Credit: Blick/RDB/ullstein bild via Getty Images)