Raymond Samuel Tomlinson was an American computer programmer who invented the first email program on the ARPANET system, the precursor to the Internet, in 1971. It was the first system able to send mail between users on different hosts connected to ARPANET; before it, mail could be sent only to others who used the same computer. To achieve this he used the @ sign to separate the username from the name of the machine, a scheme still used in email addresses today. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
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1. Ray Tomlinson (Wikipedia)
- Wikipedia 'Ray Tomlinson': infobox birth_date, checked 2026-09-27
In Field: Electrical Engineering, Categories
American electrical engineers
Invented: Email, Lead section
Raymond Samuel Tomlinson (April 23, 1941, March 5, 2016) was an American computer programmer who invented the first email program on the ARPANET system, the precursor to the Internet, in 1971; it was the first system able to send mail between users on different hosts connected to ARPANET. Previously, mail could be sent only to others who used the same computer.
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