Question from Sarah W.:
When was the first email sent?
-Sarah
Ray Tomlinson sent the first email in 1971. The message was sent from one Digital Equipment Corporation DEC-10 computer to another Digital Equipment Corporation DEC-10 computer which was sitting right beside it. The computers however were not connected directly to one another. The message was sent via ARPANET which was a way of networking computers used prior to the internet.
The content of the first message has been forgotten. The message was sent using the @ sign. The @ sign separated the users login name and the name of the host computer.
Today about 294 billion email message are sent each day.