Photo of Ray Tomlinson
Tomlinson was an American computer programmer who first implemented an email system on the ARPANET system. Tomlinson did this in the 1960's at MIT. Very few networks/ platforms/systems were up and running at that time and they were constant issues, and were not really fast. They used dial up that was drastically slow and everything was CLI (Command Line Interface). So email was basically short text messages back and forth to each other. Much like SMS text messages of today (2021). The big difference between now and today is the way in which you receive your email. In the 1960’s if you were lucky enough, you may have had to power everything up then wait for it all to boot up, then trouble shoot any problems, then get a connection with your dial up provider, which most of the time had some kind of issue, so an hour latter you may be getting your email. Talk about dedication! Think about that for second, an hour just to get a text message?