Raymond Samuel Tomlinson (April 23, 1941 – March 5, 2016) was an American computer programmer who created the first email program on the ARPANET system, the early version of the Internet, in 1971. This program was the first to allow users to send messages between people using different computers connected to ARPANET. Before this, messages could only be sent to others using the same computer. To make this possible, Tomlinson used the @ symbol to separate a person’s username from the name of their computer, a method still used in email addresses today.

The Internet Hall of Fame described his work as "a complete revolution, fundamentally changing the way people communicate." He is also credited with creating the TCP three-way handshake, a method that helps computers connect and is used in HTTP and many 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. 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 went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, New York, where he participated in the co-op program with IBM. He received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from RPI in 1963.

After graduating from RPI, he entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to continue his electrical engineering education. At MIT, Tomlinson worked in the Speech Communication Group, focusing on speech synthesis. He became interested in computers after seeing students play Spacewar!. He spent more time working with digital systems and used them in his thesis project. He developed an analog–digital hybrid speech synthesizer as the subject of his thesis for the 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 programs called Creeper and Reaper, which could copy themselves.

Tomlinson also created CPYNET, a program that moved files between computers connected to ARPANET. In 1971, he was asked to modify an existing program called SNDMSG, which let users leave messages for others on the same computer. He used parts of CPYNET to improve SNDMSG, allowing users to send messages between different computers over the network. This was the first system for sending email across 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, possibly a random string like "QWERTYUIOP." This is often incorrectly quoted as "The first e-mail was QWERTYUIOP." He later said, "The test messages were entirely forgettable, and I have forgotten them."

To help people identify where an email was going, Tomlinson chose the @ symbol to separate a user’s name from the computer’s name (user@host). This format is still used today. The @ symbol was not commonly used in usernames or TENEX programming, and it clearly showed the message’s destination. In 2010, the @ sign was added to the Museum of Modern Art’s collection as a "defining symbol of the computer age," credited to Tomlinson.

At first, the email system was not seen as important. Tomlinson created it on his own, not as part of his job, and 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 informal 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 professional life, holding the position of principal scientist. In his personal life, he had little connection to consumer technology. Adrienne LaFrance, a writer for The Atlantic, referred to him as a "self-professed Luddite," explaining that he did not own a mobile phone and had only recently made a Facebook account.

Tomlinson passed away due to a heart attack on March 5, 2016, at his home in Lincoln, Massachusetts, at the age of 74. His death received attention and praise from the technology community, 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 honored with 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 received a Webby Award from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences for lifetime achievement. He was also inducted into the Rensselaer Alumni Hall of Fame that same year.
• In 2002, he was given the Innovative Innovating Award of Innovation by Discover magazine.
• 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 influential innovator and idea from MIT in the MIT150 list.
• In 2012, Tomlinson was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame by the Internet Society.
• In 2022, Email Day, an annual national holiday, was created to celebrate Ray Tomlinson and his invention of email. April 23, Tomlinson’s birthday, was chosen as the holiday’s date.
• The asteroid 10108 Tomlinson, discovered in 1992 by Carolyn S. Shoemaker and Eugene M. Shoemaker at the Palomar Observatory, was named in his honor.