Another appointment with the stories of the pioneers whose genius gave life to the Network we know today. Today's protagonist is Ray Tomlinson, the inventor of email.

"I knew what I was doing, but I could never have imagined the impact of my invention," are the words of a computer genius, Ray Tomlinson. American, originally from Lincoln, Massachusetts, is the father of modern email.

How did he have the intuition that changed the way billions of people communicate around the world? Let's tell his story as a pioneer.

Billions of emails sent every year

According to the analysis site Statista, in 2018 alone, 280 billion emails were sent. In recent years, many have celebrated "the death of email," which, however, has always defended itself quite well.

The many instant messaging chats, which some analysts predicted would replace emails, have not succeeded in doing so: according to Statista's analysis, the number of emails sent annually will not decrease over time; on the contrary, it will increase, reaching over 300 billion in 2022.

This extraordinary form of communication, which has endured for decades, was invented by Ray Tomlinson in 1971. The story of the invention we will tell demonstrates how great innovations arise from the coexistence of two elements:

1. An absolute genius, and Tomlinson was one
2. The desire to simplify complex processes.

How email is born: all the steps

Sometimes in the life of a genius, there is a moment that becomes fundamental. In the case of Ray Tomlinson, this "moment" occurs at MIT, where in the 1960s he is pursuing his doctorate.

A colleague, recognizing his skill but also the limitations he faced in the university context, advised him to try to get hired at BBN, a very cutting-edge IT company at the time in the development of network infrastructures. Ray was hired in 1967 and has not left since.

The managers immediately recognize his talent and therefore allow him the freedom to try things. Work on a series of projects until it is born ARPANET. In those years, talented young computer scientists like him began to take an interest in the early core of the Internet.

Ray tries to understand how to make his contribution. He then comes across some protocols drafted by the SRI, acronym for Stanford Research Institute, the university that at the time is one of the first nodes of the nascent Network. This protocol is called "Mail Box Protocol" and it can be read here.

After reviewing it, Ray is convinced he can do something better. After all, theThe SRI protocol is too complicated: plans to transfer messages between different mailboxes, but solely for the purpose of sending files to be printed.

"It was all too complicated. What we wanted was simply to allow people to send messages to each other."

The systems for sending messages through the SRI protocol have two problems:

1. Messages can be sent not to a specific person, but to a numbered mailbox.
2. The system is very limited and allows sharing messages within the same group and on the same computer.

In other words, it is not possible to send messages from one computer to another. Moreover, computers are still too expensive: it takes more than 3,000 dollars to buy two, and for this reason, it is customary for the same computer to be used by multiple users.

Ray's invention

Once the limitations of the existing systems have been identified, Ray works on his innovation. It has been experimenting with a protocol for transferring files for some time now. and combines some of the parts with the idea of using them for message transfer.

With his solution, he manages to separate the machine name from the user name – using the symbol “@” (still used today) and allows, thanks to the "file transfer program" he previously devised, to send emails from one computer to another.

He sent the first email in 1971. Frequently interviewed, he says he does not remember what the message was. Fperhaps something like "QWERTYUIOP", the first letters of the keyboard. Once satisfied with the functions of his invention, he extends it to his colleagues. How? Precisely with an email, in which he explains to them how to use the new system.

The importance of patience

Ray waits more than twenty years to see his invention used by more people. Sonly in 1993 did his method begin to spread, a few years after the birth of World Wide Web.  On the other hand, Arpanet, even at its maximum extension, had just 1000 users who had to take turns using about 20 machines.

Despite the long wait, Ray remains convinced that his invention would change communication on the Network, as it eventually did.

Ray passed away in 2016 at the age of 74. A few years earlier, in 2012, was inducted by the Internet Society into the Internet Hall of Fame.