©Mark
Ollig
He
invented the “@” sign we use to connect an email name with the computer host destination
address.
Sending
emails is such an everyday part of our lives; we don’t think much about it.
Every
year, 74 trillion business and consumer emails are sent.
The
name of the person we need to thank for today’s email is Raymond S. Tomlinson.
In
1971, Tomlinson was working with the DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) KA10
PDP-10 computer program called TENEX, a time-sharing software program system operating
on Digital PDP-10 computers.
Researching
today’s column topic, I looked up the definition for “electronic mail” and was
referenced back to the 1840s and inventor Samuel Morse’s use of his Morse Code
– which technically was how mail messages were first sent or “keyed” by
electronically coded means.
During
the 1930s, messages were typed and received on teleprinter terminal machines
electronically linked with each other over a shared network.
These
machines were used mostly by governments, corporations, newspapers and the
military.
The
terminal’s message output was printed on paper. The early teleprinter looked a
lot like a typewriter.
Telephone
companies provided access to the Telex network (mostly via copper cable pairs) for
the inter-connection of teleprinter machines. When I started in the telephone
industry, we called the teleprinter connection a TWX (Teletype Wide-area eXchange)
line.
I
recall installing and maintaining TWX (pronounced “Twix”) lines for teletype
terminals connected at the local police station, and the larger industries and
businesses within the local telephone company serving area.
In
the late 1960s, the US Defense Department began working on its own computer network
called Advanced Research Projects Agency Network or ARPANET, which evolved into
the internet.
Getting
back to 1971, 30-year-old Ray S. Tomlinson began working on improving mail messages
using a software program called SNDMSG, which his company used within their
local network.
At
this time, a user’s network mailbox was a simple message text file. User message
files could only be sent and accessed over a shared mainframe/host computer
network using a teletype machine.
Tomlinson
considered the software program called CPYNET, which he realized could be used
along with the SNDMSG program to transmit a user’s email or “message-files to other
users on different computer networks.
Working
with CPYNET software code protocols which transferred files through ARPANET,
Mr. Tomlinson was able to incorporate it with the SNDMSG program code used for
local inter-user mail.
He
programmed these codes so the mail-file messages could determine the local
computer host email from email destined to a remote computer host network.
Two
host computers operating over separate networks were located in the room
Tomlinson was working. The computers sat side-by-side on the same floor.
One
computer was a DEC KA10 PDP-10, and the other was a smaller memory capacity
model DEC.
Ray
Tomlinson decided to use the “@” symbol to identify the terminating email
address was “at” a different/remote computer host network; the email addressee was
not on the same local computer network as the person originating the email.
By
using the @ symbol, Tomlinson was able to use his programming code to connect
the user name with the destination address and thus directed an email message
to be sent out to a totally separate computer system over the ARPANET and reach
its intended email address on the remote host computer.
The
first email message was sent in late 1971 from the host computer over the ARPANET
and to another computer located on another network.
Tomlinson
says the first email message he sent likely contained the test word “QUERTYIOP”
or similar. He said in later interviews that he hadn’t kept the original email.
Admittedly,
that first e-mail message was historic. We do know the first email was typed on
a Teletype KSR-33 terminal connected to one host computer which was
successfully sent and received by another host computer’s Teletype KSR-33 on a
different network.
"The
invention of email came out of a personal desire for a more convenient and
functional way to communicate,” Tomlinson said during his induction into the
Internet Hall of Fame in 2012.
“Basically,
I was looking for a method that did not require the person to be there when the
message was sent and enabled the receiver to read and answer communications at
their convenience,” he added.
A
photograph of where the first email message using the @ symbol sent between two
different host computers over two different networks using Teletype KSR-33
terminals can be seen at https://bit.ly/1QXOhZU.
Tomlinson
created the email addressing scheme user@host, which became the standard for
email addresses and still is today.
He
was a long-time employee of BBN (Bolt, Beranek, and Newman), which, at the end
of 1968, won the 1968 US government contract to build the ARPANET, the
forerunner of the internet.
Ray
Samuel Tomlinson was born in Amsterdam, NY in 1941, and died March 5, 2016, in
Lincoln, MA.
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| Photo created by me! :) |