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Today, millions of emails are sent here and there every minute where we are living in the digital world. But do you know that the email started with a message that had no receiver. When the world’s first email was sent, there was no one to get it on the second side.

Email is an electronic mail, a digital message that is sent from one computer to another through the Internet. Today we use it on platforms like Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo but in 1971 it was a revolutionary idea. Email speeded up correspondence and brought the world closer than ever. In this, text, image, files, and even videos can be sent to any corner of the world in just a few seconds.

Story of first email

Email is a message that reaches from one computer to another in the blink of an eye through the Internet. Today there are about 4.48 billion email users all over the world and more than 361 billion emails are sent every day. But the seed of this digital dialogue was sown in 1971 and the fun is that there was no receiver when the first email was sent.

In 1971, Ray Tominson was working in a US research company BBN. They were experimenting on Arpanet (early form of modern internet). At that time Ray discovered a way to send a message between two computers that were on the same network. But because at that time there were very few people on Arpanet, Ray sent the first email to his own account. And this was the first message “Qwertyuiop” means the letter of the first line of the keyboard. Ray later stated that it was not a special message, just a test. But this test became a milestone in the world of digital communication.

Born ‘@’

Ray Tomlinson began using @ icon in the email address, which separates the name of the user and the computer. For example [email protected] has “Ray” user and “BBN.com” server. This small mark is the biggest symbol of email today. Ray later jokingly said, “I did not know that ‘@’ would be so famous”. Ray Tomlinson once laughed and said, “I thought this is a small experiment, but it became a part of the whole world.”

The challenges of that time

It was not easy to send email at that time as today. Then the computers were big, the Internet was very slow and very few people were connected on the network. Ray had to use programs such as SNDMSG (Send Message) and CPYNET to connect two computers. Nevertheless, his use was so successful that it changed the world of internet forever.