Long before social networks, instant messaging, or online collaboration tools, there was email. It became the first truly universal application on the Internet, a tool that connected researchers, engineers, and eventually billions of people around the world. Its origins trace back to one engineer, Ray Tomlinson, whose small experiment in 1971 introduced a communication method that would transform digital interaction.
The early ARPANET environment
In the early 1970s, the ARPANET served a small community of researchers who shared computational resources across different institutions. Communication between users on the same computer was possible through local messaging systems. However, sending messages between different computers on the network was not yet a capability.
Tomlinson was working at Bolt Beranek and Newman in Boston, helping develop ARPANET applications. One of his tasks involved improving file transfer programs, which could send data from one machine to another. At the same time, he had written a simple program for sending messages on a single computer.
He realised these two systems could be combined.
The first network email
Tomlinson modified his messaging program so that messages could be transferred across ARPANET’s network protocols. To distinguish between a user and the host computer, he needed a character that was not commonly used in usernames. He chose the @ symbol because it clearly read as “user at host”.
This decision became one of the most recognisable conventions in the world.
The first network email message was not preserved, but Tomlinson later recalled it was likely a short and meaningless test line. The significance of the moment was not in the content, but in the fact that the message travelled from one computer to another through a packet-switched network.
Why Email spread so quickly
Email filled an immediate need. Researchers on ARPANET were dispersed across multiple institutions. Coordinating work through memos or phone calls was slow.
Email provided:
- Near-instant message delivery
- Asynchronous communication
- A written record that could be saved and referenced
- A tool that required no special equipment beyond a network connection
Within a few years, email became the most widely used ARPANET application. It accounted for a large share of all network traffic, far more than file transfers or remote logins.
By the 1980s, email systems were standard in universities, government departments, and businesses that had access to network infrastructure.
Early email features
The early versions of email were basic, but they already included concepts that still exist:
- To, From, and Date headers
- The ability to read and store messages
- Lists of recipients
- The idea of inboxes and outgoing messages
Tomlinson's lasting influence
Ray Tomlinson never attempted to commercialize his invention, nor did he predict its global impact. He simply wanted to solve a practical problem in a way that felt natural to him as an engineer. Yet his idea shaped how people communicate across the world.
Email became the first mass communication tool on the Internet. It enabled collaboration across distance, supported early online communities, and helped define the workplace culture for decades to come. Many modern services evolved from email’s core principles, including messaging apps and collaborative platforms.