We've come a long way since the first email ever was sent in 1971. How has email changed our lives?
This past week saw the passing of the 50th anniversary of email. That is 50 years since the first email ever was sent. 1971 feels like a lifetime ago for many, and many more weren't even born then. For the latter, they've always known email to be around.
The first Email Ever Sent
The first email was sent by Ray Tomlinson in March 1971. Tomlinson sent the first email because it was what he described as a "neat thing to do." Many people, including himself, didn't really see the point in emails. With telephones as a way to communicate with one another, the idea of emails seemed redundant.
Because email wasn't seen as a viable communication method that would catch on, the initial purpose of email was for file transfer. Email was a way to easily send files to other computer users across a network, without having to make physical copies on a (gasp!) floppy disk. Even to this day, many people still use emails to send files to one another— much larger files, however.
In his first email, Tomlinson just sent the line "QWERTYUIOP." As many people will recognize, this string of seemingly random characters is actually the first line of a standard keyboard.
For his email, Tomlinson developed the use of the "@" symbol. The reason behind this symbol, which is now regularly used without a second thought, is to literally show where the sender was. Tomlinson also created the fields of an email, those being the sender, subject, date, body of the email, as well as the "from" field.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I suspect that it wasn't too long later that the grandfather of the current crop of Nigerian princes' sent their first email requesting assistance!