Last week the email had its 50th anniversary. Yes, 50 years have passed since the first email was sent.
1971 seems far away for many, while many were not even born. For the latter, there were always emails.
The first email was sent by Ray Tomlinson in March 1971. Tomlinson sent the first email because he thought it was cool (cool doesn't come from cool, never mind). A lot of people, including himself, didn't really see the point of messages email. With phones as the main means of communication, the idea of emails seemed unnecessary.
Because e-mail was not considered a viable method of communication that could survive, the original purpose of e-mail was to transfer files.
E-mail was and is a way to easily send files to other computer users on a network without having to create copies in one floppy disk (then) or a USB. Even to this day, as we mentioned above, many people still use email to send files to each other – much larger files, however.
In his first email, Tomlinson sent the letters "QWERTYUIOP" a series of seemingly random characters that are actually the first line of a standard keyboard.
For his email, Tomlinson developed the use of the “@” symbol. The reason behind this symbol, which is now used everyday without a second thought, is to literally show where the sender is. Tomlinson also created the fields of an email, such as the sender, the theme, the date, the body of the email, as well as the “from” field.
Email has come a long way since 1971. Now they can use many features like Auto-Advance. Email has adapted and changed over the years, but maybe Tomlinson was right. Email is not a great method of communication.
While e-mail was widely used from the 90s to the mid-2000s, we are now moving away.
Email is instant, but not instant for the modern age. Chat, video calls and social networks have taken over the email space. Emails are usually only used for official workplace communications or really annoying email marketing.
Email was undoubtedly useful, and an important step in the development of modern communication. Everything else came from the humble email.
