Email, also known as electronic mail, is a way for people to message each other using electronic devices. The first email was created by Ray Tomlinson and sent in 1972. He was working on this as a personal side project. Tomlinson also initiated the use of the "@" symbol to separate the names of the user and the user's machine in 1971. The first email he sent was a message from one Digital Equipment Corporation DEC-10 computer to another DEC-10 computer. Nowadays email operates across computer networks, but mostly the internet. At one point, email systems required both the author and the recipient to be online at the same time, common with instant messaging. Today, neither the user or the computer needs to be online to receive mail since servers accept, forward, deliver, and store messages. This allows for users to be “offline” but still receive messages from others that were sent at any time.
I think the invention of the email is something very important since it is similar to texting but is still used today. It’s interesting that one person came up with the “@” symbol just to have a separation between someone’s name and a company. I find it surprising that email is still commonly used today since there are many similar forms of communication. Especially, texting seems quicker but in reality, it might be easier to read a long message over email than through text message. Overall, email has come a long way with several companies offering free emails and allowing anyone to make as many emails as they want.
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