Ben Cook

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Benjamin Cook (born October 29, 1987) has been declared by the Guinness Book of World Records as having sent the world's fastest SMS (text) message.

1 Breaking the Record
2 Events and Media Coverage
3 Personal life
4 References

[edit] Breaking the Record

Ben originally broke the record of held by James Tressler on November 16, 2004 while on the air at KUTV News studios in Salt Lake City, Utah keying in the required phrase set forth by Guinness: "The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human." He was able to tap the message at a blazing 57.75 seconds. This record was quickly beaten by a woman in Singapore and Ben never officially made it into the Guinness Book of World Records.

Nearly two years later while on a PR trip for Cricket Communications in the Denver, Colorado area, Ben once again made a qualified attempt to reclaim his title as text messaging king. On July 29, 2006 with the cameras rolling, Ben was able to again set a new world record by typing in the required phrase at an amazing speed of 42.22 seconds. Ben's record was then broken by 16 year old Ang Chuang Yang of Singapore on November 12, 2006 at 41.52 seconds.

On December 19, 2006 Ben regained his title while visiting Portland Oregon typing the tongue-twisting phrase in just 41.00 seconds.[1]

[edit] Events and Media Coverage

November 16, 2004 - Ben was featured on KUTV morning news (Salt Lake City CBS affiliate). His good friend Dave Stoddard and he attempted to set a new world record.

May 2005 - Ben was invited to be on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno where he competed against HAM radio operators using Morse Code. Ben lost this friendly competition since his message was not sent peer-to-peer like Morse code. While his parter waited for the message to be sent to him from the nearest cell tower, the competition had completed their transmission.

October 2006 - Ben was invited to a conference in Orlando, Florida by Nuance Communications to compete against their voice recognition software. Ben outperformed others competing using various forms of text messaging, but was beaten by the new technology. This story was picked up by the Associated Press and printed in numerous newspapers around the globe.

[edit] Personal life

Ben was born and raised in Orem, Utah where he is an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He graduated from Timpanogos High School in Orem in 2006. He was recently called to serve an LDS mission in Tokyo Japan from 2007-2009.