WASHINGTON: Ray Tomlinson, the Americanprogrammer widely credited with inventing email, has died. Hewas 74.
Before Tomlinson invented direct electronic messagesbetween users on different machines on a certain network in1971. Before then, users could only write messages to othersusing the same computer.
"A true technology pioneer, Ray was the man who brought usemail in the early days of networked computers," his employer,Raytheon, said in a statement.
"His work changed the way the world communicates and yet,for all his accomplishments, he remained humble, kind andgenerous with his time and talents, He will be missed by oneand all."A company spokesman said Tomlinson passed away onSaturday, and the cause of death was not yet confirmed.
Tributes poured in from the online world.
"Thank you, Ray Tomlinson, for inventing email and puttingthe @ sign on the map. #RIP," Google's Gmail team tweeted.
Vint Cerf, considered one of the fathers of the Internetwho was once a manager of the US Defence Advanced ResearchProjects Agency (DARPA), lamented the "very sad news" ofTomlinson's passing.
When Tomlinson invented the user@host standard for emailaddresses, it was applied at DARPA's ARPANET, the Internet'sprecursor. He was the first to use the @ symbol in this way,to distinguish a user from its host.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduatedetailed his creation on his blog, in an attempt to preventlegend from overtaking the facts.
"The first message was sent between two machines that wereliterally side by side" connected only through ARPANET, hewrote on his blog.
"I sent a number of test messages to myself from onemachine to the other. The test messages were entirelyforgettable and I have, therefore, forgotten them.
"Most likely the first message was QWERTYUIOP or somethingsimilar," he added, referring to the first letters on thetraditional English-language keyboard.
"When I was satisfied that the program seemed to work, Isent a message to the rest of my group explaining how to sendmessages over the network. The first use of network emailannounced its own existence." (AFP)AYP
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