Ray Tomlinson- helped create the email as early as 1971!

Everyone uses emails nowadays. But one person shaped the email as we know it, many decades ago. This was when most people did not even know about the Internet! Actually, many people did not even know how a computer worked, and if it would ever be used in homes. 

In 1971, Mr. Ray Tomlinson connected two computer programs, called SNDMSG and CPYNET - and the rest was history. It would change the way people communicate.

Mr. Ray Tomlinson made many features within the email programme that we use even till today! 

For example, if you have to send an email to your friend, you would send that email message to an email address, right? That would be something like Friend@gmail.com . Notice the '@' symbol? 

Yes Mr. Ray Tomlinson decided to use the ‘@’ symbol within the email address- and that symbol is used even till now to send and receive emails. 

Mr Roy Tomlinson is no more now unfortunately. He passed away on Saturday, 5th March 2016 at age 74.

An important thing to note is that, though Mr. Roy Tomlinson did some really important work and brought the idea of email into practical use, he was not the 'inventor' of email. Many technical scientists had proposed theories around sending messages - but back then- they could only send message to the same computer.

Mr. Ray Tomlinson, tried something different and succeeded. He wanted messages to be sent from one computer to another computer - which was the real use of email. 

Later, he was the key developer of the ‘subject’, ‘from’, and ‘date’ lines that are still an essential part of modern email.

So, what was the first email sent? Well, Mr Tomlinson himself did not remember, but thinks it was some insignificant message. “Something like ‘QWERTYUIOP,'” he said.

Rest in peace Ray Tomlinson.

Attribution: Featured image from Flickr under licence 'available for reuse'