Raymond Tomlinson

What Does Raymond Tomlinson Mean?

Raymond Tomlinson is a computer programmer who is credited with creating email. In 1971, Tomlinson took an existing system for local email, known as SNDMSG, and added a file transfer program called CPYNET, so that messages could be sent over a network. Tomlinson’s work was done for the ARPANET project, and email quickly became the dominant activity over the network.

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Techopedia Explains Raymond Tomlinson

Email was the first "killer app" for the early Internet, accounting for a majority of the packets being sent back and forth on ARPANET. Tomlinson was, of course, the first person to send email across a network. The computers he used were side by side and the message was a random string of characters that he quickly forgot. Tomlinson is also credited with choosing the "@" sign to separate an individual email from the host. It was such an elegant solution that it persists to this day.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…