Ray Tomlinson Sends Networked Email and Chooses the @ Symbol
- Date
- 1971
- Category
- Science, technology & invention
- Region
- North America (United States)
- Era
- Contemporary
- Significance
Networked electronic mail was born in late 1971 when Ray Tomlinson, a programmer at Bolt, Beranek and Newman working on ARPANET, sent the first message between two computers connected by a network rather than sharing one machine.
Adapting an existing local-messaging program, he needed a way to specify which host a user was on and reached for a little-used key on his Teletype: the @ sign, separating the username from the machine name in a convention still used in every email address today. His two test computers sat only a few feet apart, and he later admitted the first message was forgettable test text. The innovation transformed ARPANET from a file-transfer experiment into a communication medium, and email quickly became its most popular application, foreshadowing how the internet would ultimately be defined by human connection more than raw computing. Tomlinson's simple addressing scheme scaled globally without modification, quietly shaping how billions of people would correspond. The @ symbol, once obscure, became one of the most recognisable characters of the connected era.
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Empires active in 1971
- Soviet Union1922 CE – 1991 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Solomonic dynasty1270 CE – 1974 CE
- Dutch Empire1581 CE – 1975 CE
Related science, technology & invention events
- Intel Releases the 4004, the First Commercial Microprocessor1971
- The Apple II Launches the Personal Computer Era1977
- Invention of the integrated circuit1958–1959
- Invention of the transistor at Bell LabsDecember 1947
- First ARPANET message, precursor of the Internet29 October 1969
- IBM Launches the Personal Computer1981
Further reading
The wider story
A Little History of Science
Warm, jargon-free tour of discovery from Babylonian stargazers to the genome.
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