MAGAZINE
21 March 2011 Last updated at 10:33
Twitter, telegram and e-mail: Famous first lines
By Tom Geoghegan
BBC News Magazine
Twitter launched five years ago with the simple message "just setting up my twttr".
In the same way, many technological breakthroughs that ultimately shaped the
world began life, not with a fanfare of trumpets, but with a few humble words.
"Alright, so here we are in front of the elephants."
And so with great understatement, the first words were uttered on YouTube, in its first video
posted in April 2005. Me at the Zoo depicts co-founder Jawed Karim at San Diego Zoo. And
yes, he's in front of the elephants. Six years, and billions of page views later, YouTube has
become part of the media landscape, used by the Queen, world leaders and the owners of pets
that do weird things.
If Karim knew back then how big his new venture would become, maybe he would have given
that first video more of a sense of occasion. But maybe not. Every new phenomenon has to
start somewhere, after all.
And now Twitter's first forays into the 140-character world are being remembered as it marks
its fifth birthday. On 21 March 2006, an automated message from founder Jack Dorsey said
"just setting up my twttr", then the first human tweet was sent when he typed the two
words "inviting co-workers" and hit send.
Considering those two tweets led to billions more, it was an underwhelming start, rather like
taking the first steps into an exciting new world, but instead of making a grand entrance,
slipping in the back door and wiping your feet on the mat.
Older technologies started in similar fashion. Martin Cooper is the man credited with making
the world's first call from a truly portable mobile phone, from a New York pavement on 3 April
1973.
Speaking from the US this week, the 82-year-old recalled the moment when, as a 45-year-old
research director leading a team at Motorola, he made the historic call using a prototype
Dyna-Tac. Although reporters were present, it wasn't recorded.
"I was calling Joel Engel at AT&T, which at the time was the biggest company in the world. We
were a little company in Chicago. They considered us to be a flea on an elephant.
"I said 'Joel, this is Marty. I'm calling you from a cellphone, a real, handheld, portable
cellphone.' There was a silence at the other end. I suspect he was grinding his teeth."
A big call on a big phone - Cooper in 1973 and now
A hundred years before Cooper made history, Alexander Bell tested his new invention although many dispute whether he was the first - of the telephone, by ringing his assistant in
the next room. "Mr Watson, come here. I want to see you," were his first words.
And 11 years later, Neil Armstrong uttered some of the most famous, and hotly debated,
words ever spoken when he took the first human steps on the Moon's surface: "That's one
small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."
Those words set the benchmark, says speechwriter Max Atkinson, because they have so
endured so well. One of the rules of a great line is to invoke a contrast, which Armstrong does
beautifully.
The world's first text message
Sent by Neil Papworth, a 22-year-old engineer at Sema, now Airwide Solutions, from a PC in
the US to a Vodafone employee in the UK, in December 1992, it simply read "Merry
Christmas".
If you had written the world’s first text message, what would you have said?
Design your own technological invention that could have a
significant impact on society, make sure you explain it fully.
A prize will be awarded for the best invention!