Engineer of the company BBN, Ray Tomlinson works in 1971 on the design of the network ARPANET, for the US government. He then developed two programs:

• SNDMSG (Send Message) which allows two users connected on the same computer to leave messages mutually.
• CPYNET which can send files on one or the other of the computers connected by ARPANET.

It has with the autumn 1972 the idea to associate these two programs to send messages to a user connected on another computer. It designs two letter-boxes out of two computers and manages to be sent very first the Email whose message was: QWERTYUIOP (either the first line on the English keyboard (QWERTY)) or 1-2-3 test . In order to define the address of sending, it will need to separate in this one the part indicating the user of that indicating the computer on which the box of reception is: The arobase @ which is used in no proper name or common is ideal to play the part of separator, the more so as she decides At - at - in English.

See too

• Email

• ARPANET
• Internet