Original Story : http://www.our-picks.com/archives/2006/12/13/who-sent-the-first-e-mail/

I’ve always asked myself who sent the first e-mail, ever and whether if he was aware of the fact that he would be starting an evolutionist era for the future generations. For those of you who had asked themselves this question at least once until now, and for those of you who are just curious in finding out the answer, I have searched around and found a few hints.

I like to think that the sending of the first e-mail message was of the same impact of the first phone call ever made, or the one of the first telegram ever sent. Huge.

It might be disappointing, but the first e-mail message wasn’t much of an informational one. But I’ll start with the beginning. Before the Internet, there was a computer network called ARPANET, developed by the U.S. Defense Department with the help of a company called Bolt, Beranek and Newman.

To skip to the point, the first message was sent by Ray Tomlinson, a computer engineer at the above mentioned company, in 1971. He was located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and he sent an e-mail message from his computer to another computer right next to him. It was a test message, it appears. Something like “QWERTYUIOP”. He was actually playing around with two programs called SNDMSG and READMAIL that allowed users to leave messages to each other on the same machine. He merged the two files with a third program called CYPNET (a file sharing program, between computers). The combined technology allowed people to send and receive files that could be appended between different machines.

Despite his success with the e-mail, Ray Tomlinson is better known to the general population as the guy who introduced the “@” locator in e-mail addresses. Like I said in the beginning, I wonder if he realized the impact he will cause. What do you think?

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