{"id":23762,"date":"2016-03-08T00:57:37","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T00:57:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/ray-tomlinson-creator-of-modern-email-dies\/"},"modified":"2016-03-08T00:57:21","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T00:57:21","slug":"ray-tomlinson-creator-of-modern-email-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/ray-tomlinson-creator-of-modern-email-dies\/","title":{"rendered":"Ray Tomlinson, creator of modern email, dies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Tech pioneer wrote and sent the first electronic message and also chose the @ symbol to connect username and address.}<\/p>\n<p>Raymond Tomlinson, the inventor of modern email and a technological leader, has died.<\/p>\n<p>Tomlinson died on Saturday, aged 74, of a suspected heart attack, according to his employer, Raytheon Company.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A true technology pioneer, Ray was the man who brought us email in the early days of networked computers,&#8221; Mike Doble, Raytheon spokesperson, said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>Email in the form of electronic messages existed in a limited capacity before Tomlinson.<\/p>\n<p>The messages could be shared within a limited framework.<\/p>\n<p>But until his invention of the first network person-to-person email in 1971, there was no way to send something to a specific person at a specific address.<\/p>\n<p>Tomlinson wrote and sent the first email on the ARPANET system, a computer network that was created for the US government that is considered a precursor to the internet.<\/p>\n<p>Iconic symbol<\/p>\n<p>Tomlinson is the one who chose the &#8220;@&#8221; symbol to connect the username with the destination address and it has now become a cultural icon.<\/p>\n<p>He also contributed to the network&#8217;s development, among numerous other pioneering technologies in the programming world.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to Al Jazeera, Kate Bevan, a technology and social media analyst, said Tomlinson changed the way people communicate.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He paved the way for lots of other ways that we communicate as well,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Now I can&#8217;t imagine life without email, instant messaging, ways of being able to communicate with people.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Tomlinson held electrical engineering degrees from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and MIT.<\/p>\n<p>He was hired by Bolt Beranek and Newman, known as BBN, in 1967.<\/p>\n<p>It was later acquired by Raytheon Co, where he still worked at the time of his death, as a principal scientist.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-10817 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/519a367616e54fcd9eb047cd34c8dbf0_18.jpg\" alt=\"Ray Tomlinson\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Tech pioneer wrote and sent the first electronic message and also chose the @ symbol to connect username and address.} Raymond Tomlinson, the inventor of modern email and a technological leader, has died. Tomlinson died on Saturday, aged 74, of a suspected heart attack, according to his employer, Raytheon Company. &#8220;A true technology pioneer, Ray [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[75],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-23762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-technology","tag-homenews","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23762"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=23762"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=23762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}