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Raymond Tomlinson
Sign in to saveAlso known as Raymond Samuel Tomlinson, Raymond S. Tomlinson, Ray Tomlinson
American computer programmer (1941-2016)
Key facts
- Born
- Raymond Samuel Tomlinson , ( 1941-04-23 ) April 23, 1941 , Amsterdam, New York , U.S.
- Died
- March 5, 2016 (2016-03-05) (aged 74) , Lincoln, Massachusetts , U.S.
- Education
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute ( BS ) Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MS )
- Years active
- 1965–2016
- Known for
- Invention of email
- Spouse
- Ann Tomlinson
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Samuel
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- United States
- Place of birth
- Amsterdam
- Place of death
- Lincoln
- Occupation
- designer
- Educated at
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Employer
- BBN Technologies
- Languages spoken
- English language
- Award
- IEEE Internet Award
- Notable work
- @
- Field of work
- computer scientist
- Official website
- openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/home.html
- Image
- Ray Tomlinson (cropped).jpg
Show 10 more facts
- date of birth
- 1941-04-23
- Commons category
- Ray Tomlinson
- date of death
- 2016-03-05
- manner of death
- natural causes
- archives at
- Computer History Museum
- birth name
- Raymond Samuel Tomlinson
- cause of death
- myocardial infarction
- has works in the collection
- Museum of Modern Art
- start of work period
- 1971-00-00
- name in native language
- Ray Tomlinson
Sources (14)
via Wikidata · CC0
~7 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Raymond Samuel Tomlinson (April 23, 1941 – March 5, 2016) was an American computer programmer who invented the first email program on the ARPANET system, the precursor to the Internet, in 1971; it was the first system able to send mail between users on different hosts connected to ARPANET. Previously, mail could be sent only to others who used the same computer. To achieve this, he used the @ sign to separate the username from the name of their machine, a scheme which has been used in email addresses ever since.
The Internet Hall of Fame in its account of his work commented "Tomlinson's email program brought about a complete revolution, fundamentally changing the way people communicate." He is credited with the invention of the TCP three-way handshake which underlies HTTP and many other key Internet protocols.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Raymond Tomlinson” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.