KEEPING IN TOUCH

The first ever trans-Atlantic telephone call was made from New York City, USA to London, UK on this day in 1927. In keeping with this spirit, we’d like to relay you some of our other communication records:

Fastest text message
Ben Cook (USA) typed a prescribed 160-character text on his mobile phone in 42.22 sec in a contest organized by Cricket Wireless at Water World in Denver, Colorado, USA, on 29 July 2006.

Largest telephone conference call
On 25 March 2004 ACT Teleconferencing (USA) and Herbalife International (USA) conducted a telephone conference call led by Michael O. Johnson (USA), CEO of Herbalife International. The greatest number of people simultaneously connected for at least ten seconds was 10,424.

Most spammed person
Microsoft chairman William H. Gates III (USA) receives up to four million email spams each day. However, a combination of email filtering by Microsoft staff and anti-spam technology mean that only around ten spam emails reach his inbox per day.

Earliest email
In 1971, Ray Tomlinson, an engineer at the computer company Bolt, Beranek and  Newman in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, sent the first ever email. It was initally an experiment to see if he could get two computers to exchange a message. It was Ray who decided to use the @ symbol to seperate the recipient's name from their location. The first ever email message was: 'QWERTYUIOP'.

Largest LAN party
The largest LAN (Local Area Network) party consisted of 8,531 unique computers and 9,184 participants at DreamHack in the Elmia Exhibition Centre, Jönköping, Sweden from 30 November - 2 December 2006.

Most telephone directories torn in three minutes (female)
Tina Shelton (USA) tore from top to bottom 21 telephone directories, each with 1,028 numbered pages in a time of three minutes at the Ranchland Church in Escondido, California, USA, on 9 February 2007.

07 January 2008