Futurizon_klein

Text Messaging and Ian Pearson’s other inventions

I’ve started digging out some of my old articles from the early 1990s. It is a long time ago, so the articles are of no lingering commercial interest to BT where I worked at the time, but they are useful to document some of the engineering culture of the time. We had a pretty good idea even then of how much of today’s IT world would play out, but it was a time when computing was converging explosively with telecoms, where ideas were easy to come by simply because the space was so large and there were so few of us in the field. Most of the inventions I made then have long since either happened or disappeared. Some of them are inconsequential or mundane (some not even worth bothering to list here), others apparently in opposition to the laws of physics, but some of them were spot on. I am of course especially pleased to make a claim to be the inventor of text messaging in October 1991, though the version I came up with was for the fixed network and the SMS one that later took off was the one by the GSM standards people that they invented totally independently. However, mine would have worked very well on the fixed telephone network at the time, and would have ported easily to the mobile networks in due course (hardly anyone had mobile phones in 1991). I had no idea until recently whether someone else had come up with the same idea earlier, but now that companies are happily disclosing this kind of stuff on the net, and there are a few claims out there, I am happy that mine dates back quite early. It looks like a lot of us independently came up with the same ideas but that is quite the norm these days in engineering. Engineers are all exposed to similar stimuli, and often come up with the same ideas as their competitors in the same week or month. None of us patented it but everyone benefits.

I’ll add the rest of my early ideas to this list as I have time to edit the cover notes, but here are the ones I’ve edited so far. The dates listed are the date when I got round to writing them up, so some appear to be in batches. I’ve omitted many that were intended solely for BT use, such as reconfigurable exchanges and interfaces conversion tools. They are unlikely to be of any interest now to anyone. I can’t list many ideas after 1994 since they could still be of possible commercial interest to BT. The ones I have listed have been developed elsewhere, such as the ego badge, or are simply no longer worthwhile, such as the active 35mm slides.

Active contact lens, May 1991

Active 35mm slides, Nov 1994

Advanced joystick, July 1991

Advanced battery charger, Nov 92

Brain refresh mechanism, April 1991

Carbon fullerene uses, Dec 1991

Carbon fullerene micromotors, March 92

Electron Pipe, July 1991

Email security threats, Dec 1991

Emergency distress beacon for women, March 1992

Eyeball camera applications, 1993

Home barcode reader, 1992