Ray Tomlinson

Who they were

Raymond Samuel Tomlinson was an American computer programmer who invented the first email program on the ARPANET system, the precursor to the Internet, in 1971; it was the first system able to send mail between users on different hosts connected to ARPANET. Previously, mail could be sent only to others who used the same computer. To achieve this, he used the @ sign to separate the username from the name of their machine, a scheme which has been used in email addresses ever since.

Early life

Educated at: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Early life and education Raymond Samuel Tomlinson was born [ 1 ] in Amsterdam, New York , but his family soon moved to the small, unincorporated village of Vail Mills, New York . [ 2 ] [ 3 ] His father Raymond Tomlinson worked in carpet mills and later worked in the grocery business. His mother Dorothy Tomlinson worked for a dry cleaner. [ 4 ] He attended Broadalbin Central School in nearby Broadalbin, New York. [ 5 ]

Path and career

Worked with / for: BBN Technologies.

Awards / honours: Princess of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, Eduard-Rhein Cultural Award, Internet Hall of Fame, and IEEE Internet Award.

Career In 1967, he joined the technology company of Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN; now Raytheon BBN ), where he helped develop the TENEX operating system including the ARPANET Network Control Program , implementations of Telnet , and implementations on the self-replicating programs Creeper and Reaper . Tomlinson also developed CPYNET, a file transfer program designed to transmit files between computers connected to the ARPANET. In 1971,

Later life and death Tomlinson remained at BBN for the rest of his career, serving as a principal scientist. [ 1 ] In his personal life, he maintained a minimal relationship with consumer technology. Adrienne LaFrance of The Atlantic described him as a "self-professed Luddite," noting that he did not own a mobile phone and had only recently created a Facebook account. [ 2 ] Tomlinson died of a heart attack on March 5, 2016, at his home in Lincoln, Massachusetts , at the age of 74. [ 3 ]

Why this date

Ray Tomlinson appears on our March 5 calendar for 2016 as a death entry.