Raymond Samuel Tomlinson was an American computer programmer born on April 23, 1941, and died on March 5, 2016. In 1971, he created the first email program for the ARPANET system, which was an early version of the Internet. This program allowed users on different computers connected to ARPANET to send messages to each other. Before this, emails could only be sent to people using the same computer. To make this possible, Tomlinson used the @ symbol to separate a person’s name from the name of their computer, a method still used in email addresses today.

The Internet Hall of Fame noted that Tomlinson’s email program changed how people communicate. He is also credited with inventing the TCP three-way handshake, a process that supports HTTP and other important Internet protocols.

Early life and education

Tomlinson was born in Amsterdam, New York, but his family moved to the small village of Vail Mills, New York, shortly after. His father, Raymond Tomlinson, worked in carpet mills and later in the grocery business. His mother, Dorothy Tomlinson, worked for a dry cleaner. He attended Broadalbin Central School in Broadalbin, New York. Later, he studied at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York, where he participated in the co-op program with IBM. He earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from RPI in 1963.

After graduating from RPI, he went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to continue his electrical engineering studies. At MIT, Tomlinson worked in the Speech Communication Group, where he focused on creating computer-generated speech. He became interested in computers after watching students play the video game Spacewar!. Inspired by the game, he spent more time working with digital systems and included them in his thesis project. He developed an analog-digital hybrid speech synthesizer for his master's degree in electrical engineering, which he received in 1965.

Career

In 1967, he joined the technology company Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN; now Raytheon BBN), where he helped create the TENEX operating system. This included the ARPANET Network Control Program, versions of Telnet, and versions of the self-replicating programs Creeper and Reaper.

Tomlinson also created CPYNET, a program that moved files between computers connected to ARPANET. In 1971, he was asked to change an existing program called SNDMSG—used to leave messages on the same computer—so it could work on TENEX. He added parts of CPYNET to SNDMSG, allowing users to send messages between different computers on the network. This change created the first email system that worked over a network.

The first email Tomlinson sent was a test message between two computers placed next to each other. The message’s content was not saved, and Tomlinson later said it was unimportant, likely a random string like "QWERTYUIOP." This is often incorrectly quoted as "The first e-mail was QWERTYUIOP." Tomlinson later said, "The test messages were completely forgettable, and I have forgotten them."

To separate computer usernames from their locations, Tomlinson used the @ symbol in addresses (user@host). This format is still used in email today. He chose the @ symbol because it was not used in usernames or in TENEX programming, and it clearly showed where a message was going. The @ symbol, which was not widely used at the time, was added to the Museum of Modern Art’s collection in 2010. It was credited to Tomlinson and described as a "defining symbol of the computer age."

At first, the email system was not seen as important. Tomlinson developed it on his own, not as part of his job. He said it "seemed like a neat idea." When he showed it to a colleague, he joked, "Don’t tell anyone! This isn’t what we’re supposed to be working on." Despite its simple start, the system became popular among ARPANET researchers and remained one of the network’s most lasting tools. Tomlinson later said he was not surprised by email’s widespread use, stating, "I see email being used, by and large, exactly the way I envisioned."

Tomlinson preferred the term "email" over "e-mail," joking in a 2010 interview that "I’m simply trying to conserve the world’s supply of hyphens" and that "the term has been in use long enough to drop the hyphen."

Later life and death

Tomlinson continued working at BBN for the rest of his career, where he worked as a principal scientist. In his personal life, he kept a simple life when it came to using technology. Adrienne LaFrance of The Atlantic said he called himself a Luddite, which means he preferred not using new technology. He did not own a mobile phone and had just made a Facebook account.

Tomlinson died from a heart attack on March 5, 2016, at his home in Lincoln, Massachusetts, when he was 74 years old. Many people in the technology world remembered him, including a message from Vint Cerf, who helped create the TCP/IP protocol and was one of the first people to design the Internet.

Awards and honors

• In 2000, he was given the George R. Stibitz Computer Pioneer Award by the American Computer Museum, along with the Computer Science Department of Montana State University.
• In 2001, he was honored with a Webby Award by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences for lifetime achievement. That same year, he was inducted into the Rensselaer Alumni Hall of Fame.
• In 2002, Discover magazine gave him its Innovative Innovating Award of Innovation.
• In 2004, he shared the IEEE Internet Award with Dave Crocker.
• In 2009, he and Martin Cooper were awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for scientific and technical research.
• In 2011, he was listed as the 4th most important innovator and idea from MIT on the MIT150 list.
• In 2012, Tomlinson was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame by the Internet Society.
• In 2022, Email Day was created as a national holiday to celebrate Ray Tomlinson and his invention of email. April 23, his birthday, was chosen as the holiday’s date.
• In 1992, Carolyn S. Shoemaker and Eugene M. Shoemaker discovered a main-belt asteroid at the Palomar Observatory. It was named 10108 Tomlinson in his honor.