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The first email message was sent in October of 1971, so now email is 40 years old. Email was first created for military purposes. When the military communications network, ARPANET, the earliest form of the internet, was being created, the MIT graduate, Ray Tomlinson included a file transfer programme for the mainframe computers. He then modified a programme called SNDMSG, which let messages to be delivered between different users of the same computer.
At that time, computers were not commercialized and no one felt the need of owning one. He made a breakthrough of sending message eventually in October 1971. When asked what message was that he sent for the first time, Ray replied that he does not recall that well, but perhaps it was ‘QWERTY’ or some other string of characters. It travelled a distance of about a metre between two different computers.
Ray is not only known for inventing the email messaging, but he is also famous for popularizing ‘@’ symbol. This symbol was used to identify the recipient and the computer or network that they are using to deliver the message. The reason it is known as “at” is because to him it conveyed the sense of place and hence, he called the symbol so. The internet, however, did not become popular until the 1990s, when World Wide Web commercialized it. Within ten years, it became as essential tool for carrying office work around the world.
Nice Informative Article
Oh, thanks