| Robert Tomlinson “invented” email in 1971. He began by constructing a program called SNDMSG, which enabled people to leave a message for somebody that used the same machine. This grew into CYPNET, a file-transfer protocol (like the one we use for Internet today, TCP/IP) which allowed messages to be sent across a network. The ARPANET was in existence at the time, a primitive ancestor of the Internet, and Robert experimented with sending mail to other computers. Finally he came up with the locator symbol @, which distinguished between local users and those located on remote computers. It took around five years for email to take off, but technology hasn't looked back since. And what did the first email message say? “QWERTIOP”. |
