By Carol Blair Vaughn

The Godfather of Email Has Died

Ray Tomlinson, known worldwide as the inventor of email, has died of a reported heart attack at the age of 74.  Tomlinson leaves behind a wife and two children – but more famously – a method for all of us living outside our home countries to communicate with each other any time, day or night: email.

 

Tomlinson sent his first electronic message in 1971, between two computers on his desk at Bolt, Beranek and Newman in Boston, Massachusetts, where he was reportedly just goofing around at work.  According to a 1998 Forbes Magazine profile, Tomlinson showed his invention to a colleague and then said, “Don’t tell anyone!  This isn’t what we are supposed to be working on.” The message was sent on ARPANET, a military network precursor to the internet.

 

Unlike the 1876 famous first words of Alexander Graham Bell to his assistant on the world’s first telephone, “Mr. Watson – come here – I want to see you,“ Tomlinson always claimed he could not remember the wording of that first electronic message.  He said, “The text messages were entirely forgettable, and I have therefore forgotten them.”

 

Tomlinson stated, “Most likely the first message was QWERTYUIOP, or something similar.  When I was satisfied that the program seemed to work, I sent a message to the rest of my group explaining how to send messages over the network.  The first use of the network email announced its own existence.”

 

Also critically important to modern email communication was Tomlinson’s choice of using the @ sign to indicate that the user was “at” some other host, rather than being local.  Tomlinson stated that he selected @ because it wasn’t commonly used in the 1970s, so it would avoid confusion among emailers.  He said, “It’s the only preposition on the keyboard.”

 

Joyce Kuzman, spokeswoman for Tomlinson’s employer at the time of his death, Raytheon, said, “The @ symbol would probably have gone away if not for email.” Tomlinson lifted the humble @ symbol from obscurity to international icon.  It was even entered in New York City’s Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) architecture collection in 2010.

 

The correct name for @ is asperand (arroba in Spanish), but other cultures and languages have given it much more creative names.  The Germans call it a hanging monkey; the French a small snail; the Chinese a little mouse; the Hebrew a strudel; and, perhaps the most endearing, the Finnish call it miukumauku, or curled-up sleeping cat.

 

Tomlinson was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2012, where they praised his work as follows: “Tomlinson’s email program brought about a complete revolution, fundamentally changing the way people communicate, including the way businesses, from huge corporations to tiny mom-and-pop shops operate, and the way millions of people shop, bank, and keep in touch with friends and family, whether they are across town or across oceans.”

 

In 2000, Tomlinson received the George R. Stibitz Computer Pioneer Award from the American Computer Museum.  He claimed to have never earned one cent from his invention, but Raytheon spokeswoman Kuzman said, “Tomlinson was pretty philosophical about it all, and was surprisingly not addicted to email.”

 

Tomlinson’s last days were spent at his home in Lincoln, Mass., where he raised miniature sheep as a hobby.

 

On behalf of the 4 billion email users of the world, thank you Roy Tomlinson for enabling us to communicate seamlessly with each other across the miles and oceans.  RIP.

 

About the Author

Carol Blair Vaughn holds a Master’s Degree in Performing Arts and is a retired college professor from Washington, D.C. She inherited her love for Latin America from her father, the former U.S. Ambassador to Colombia, Panama, and Director of the Peace Corps, Jack Vaughn. Carol writes for the Association of Residents of Costa Rica (ARCR) and for an English language club in the southern region of Costa Rica. In the past, Carol served as Editor in Chief of What’s on Tap magazine.