Ray Tomlinson

For the Australian basketball player, see Ray Tomlinson (basketball).

Raymond Samuel Tomlinson
Born(1941-04-23)April 23, 1941
Amsterdam, New York, U.S.
DiedMarch 5, 2016(2016-03-05) (aged 74)
Lincoln, Massachusetts, U.S.
EducationRensselaer Polytechnic Institute (BS)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MS)
OccupationComputer scientist
Years active1965–2016
Known forInvention of email
SpouseAnn Tomlinson
Children2

Raymond Samuel Tomlinson (April 23, 1941 – March 5, 2016) was an American[1][2][3][4] computer programmer who implemented the first email program on the ARPANET system, the precursor to the Internet, in 1971;[5][6][7][8] It was the first system able to send mail between users on different hosts connected to ARPANET. Previously, mail could be sent only to others who used the same computer. To achieve this, he used the @ sign to separate the user name from the name of their machine, a scheme which has been used in email addresses ever since.[9] The Internet Hall of Fame in its account of his work commented "Tomlinson's email program brought about a complete revolution, fundamentally changing the way people communicate."[10][11] He is credited with the invention of the TCP three-way handshake [12] which underlies HTTP and many other key Internet protocols.

  1. ^ "Email pioneer Ray Tomlinson dead at 74". The Sydney Morning Herald. March 6, 2016.
  2. ^ "E-mail inventor Ray Tomlinson, who popularized @ symbol, dies at 74". Ars Technica. March 6, 2016.
  3. ^ ABC News. "Inventor of Modern Email, Ray Tomlinson, Dies". ABC News.
  4. ^ Claudio Müller (March 7, 2016). "E-Mail-Pionier ist tot: Rest @ Peace, Ray Tomlinson". CHIP Online.
  5. ^ "Ray Tomlinson, email inventor and selector of @ symbol, dies aged 74". the Guardian. March 7, 2016.
  6. ^ Dante D'Orazio (March 6, 2016). "Inventor of email and savior of the @ sign, Ray Tomlinson, is dead at 74". The Verge. Vox Media.
  7. ^ "Ray Tomlinson, Inventor Of Modern Email, Dies". NPR.org. March 6, 2016.
  8. ^ "Email inventor Ray Tomlinson dies at 74". BBC News. March 6, 2016.
  9. ^ Ray Tomlinson. "The First Network Email".
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference Internet Hall of Fame Bio was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ "Alumni/ae Notes - Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)".
  12. ^ Cerf, Vinton; Dalal, Yogen; Sunshine, Carl (December 1974), RFC 675, Specification of Internet Transmission Control Protocol