Lunch over IP: The natural history of the @ sign
Reading Bruno Giussani is a delight. This history of the “@” or “at” sign is a keeper. Bruno is my favorite Swiss blogger and info theory blogger out there.
“The precise birth date of e-mail is unknown, but technology historians set it somewhere in late 1971, when a then 30-year old American computer engineer, Ray Tomlinson, did what he unassuming calls “a quick hack”. He successfully sent the first electronic message from a computer to an account (his own account, in fact) on another computer.”
The early Atex systems (1973 – modified DEC PDP-11s) had what was probably the first commercially deployed email systems, as well as the forerunner of today’s IM.