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The @ Symbol
In the '70's, Ray Tomlinson picked the @ symbol from the computer keyboard to denote sending messages from one computer to another. Because of this, more than 600 million people around the world use Email. -
The First Email Message
In October of 1971, the first Email message was sent. No one knows who sent the message to who. -
Ray Tomlinson
Ray Tomlinson developed email in 1972. Like many of the Internet inventors, Tomlinson worked for Bolt Beranek as an ARPANET contractor. ARPANET stands for Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. -
Who invented the Email?
V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, an Indian-American, developed a computer program which replicated the paper mail system. This happened in the summer of 1978 when Ayyadurai was fourteen years old. He named the program "EMAIL" or electronic mail. -
The First Email System
In 1978, the first Email system was created at UMDNJ, a hospital, in Nemark, New Jersey. -
The Rise of Email
Email wasn’t embraced on a wide scale until the 1990s when the birth of the World Wide Web led to consumers embracing the Internet. -
Billions of Users
Email remains the most important application of the Internet and the most widely used facility it has. By 2008, the number of Email sent had risen to 170 billion each day, at a rate of 2 million sents per second. -
What the first Email might have said
Ray Tomlinson told The New York Times in 2008, he doesn’t remember what the first email actually said – perhaps ‘QWERTY’ or another string of characters.