Who invented electronic mail

The invention of electronic mail (email) is a story that involves several individuals and groups working over a period of time. While it is difficult to identify a single inventor of email, I can provide you with some key milestones and players in the development of email:

  1. Ray Tomlinson (1941-2016): Tomlinson is often credited with inventing email as we know it today. In 1972, while working on a project for the United States Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), Tomlinson sent the first email message between two computers. He chose the @ symbol to separate the user name from the host name, which has since become the standard format for email addresses.
  2. Seymour Papert (1929-2016): Papert, a computer scientist and mathematician, developed the concept of email in the early 1960s while working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He proposed the idea of sending messages between computers using a network, which was later implemented by Tomlinson.
  3. Vint Cerf (1943-present) and Bob Kahn (1947-present): Cerf and Kahn, often referred to as the "fathers of the internet," developed the fundamental communication protocols that enabled email to be sent over the internet. Their work on the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP) in the 1970s laid the foundation for modern email systems.
  4. Larry Roberts (1937-present): Roberts, a computer scientist and engineer, played a key role in the development of the ARPANET, the first operational packet switching network, which was the precursor to the modern internet. He oversaw the development of the network's email system, which was based on the work of Tomlinson and others.
  5. Other contributors: Many other individuals and groups contributed to the development of email, including computer scientists, engineers, and researchers at various institutions, such as the University of California, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the University of Michigan.

In summary, while it is difficult to identify a single inventor of email, Ray Tomlinson is often credited with inventing email as we know it today, and his work built upon the contributions of many others, including Seymour Papert, Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn, Larry Roberts, and others.