Ray Tomlinson: The Inventor of Email

Born in Amsterdam, New York, on April 23, 1941, studied electrical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York, where he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in 1963. During his university studies, he did an internship at IBM and then completed his master’s degree in electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1967. After his graduate studies, Tomlinson joined the company Bolt, Beranek and Newman (now BBN Technologies) as a Principal Engineer, where he would work his entire career.

In the early 1960s, network technology for sending messages from one user to another on the same computer already existed. When Ray TOMLINSON started working at BBN in 1967, he helped develop the ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. In 1971, he developed the first ARPANET application for email by combining the SNDMSG and CPYNET programs, allowing messages to be sent to users on other computers. To separate the user from his machine or electronic destination, he used the @ symbol, thus establishing the e-mail address. User@host became the standard for email addresses and remains so today.

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For a few decades after Ray TOMLINSON’s invention, email was still a novelty. The computers were too big and expensive. As the personal computer became more popular and affordable in the late 1980s and early 1990s, online services like America Online followed, and email became mainstream. In 1996, email was used more than regular mail in the United States. Today there are nearly 4 billion email accounts, with half of the world’s population using email. “I see email being used, largely, exactly the way I envisioned it. In particular, it’s not strictly a work tool or a strictly personal thing,” Tomlinson said. “Everyone uses it in different ways, but they use it in a way that works for them. »

In 2000, Ray TOMLINSON received the George R. Stibitz Computer Pioneer Award from the American Computer Museum. In 2001, he was honored with a Webby Award by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences and inducted into the Rensselaer Alumni Hall of Fame. In 2002, Discover magazine awarded it its innovation prize. In 2004, he received the Internet Prize from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He was named winner of the Prince of Asturias Prize for Technical and Scientific Research in 2009. In 2011 he was honored with the Eduard Rhein Kulturpreis Cultural Prize. He is ranked number four on MIT’s list of MIT’s Top 150 Innovators and Ideas.

Ray TOMLINSON was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2012. He sadly passed away from a heart attack on March 5, 2016 at his home in Lincoln, Massachusetts at the age of 74.

Ray TOMLINSON is today credited as the inventor of e-mail on the ARPANET system.