when was email invented

Email, as we use the word today, was effectively invented in 1971, when engineer Ray Tomlinson created the first networked email system on ARPANET and introduced the use of the @ symbol in addresses.

Quick Scoop: Key Points

• The first true email system that could send messages between different computers on a network was built in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson at BBN, working on ARPANET.

• He adapted an existing program (SNDMSG) so users could send text messages to other machines, not just people on the same computer.

• Tomlinson also chose and popularized the @ sign to separate the user name from the host name in an email address (user@host).

• Earlier “email-like” systems existed as far back as 1965 (such as MIT’s MAILBOX), but they only let users leave messages for others on the same machine, not over a network.

So if you’re answering “when was email invented” in a modern sense, the widely accepted answer is 1971 , with credit going to Ray Tomlinson on ARPANET.

TL;DR: Email was invented in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson, who sent the first network email over ARPANET and created the user@host address format we still use today.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.