Email is a network service that allows users to send and receive information (text and digital documents) through an electronic communication system. The system provides this service over the Internet, typically with the SMTP protocol, IMAP (which does not download messages to your computer), and POP3 (which downloads email messages to your computer). We will discuss the history of email, the @ symbol, how it works, and the current state of the service compared to social networks.
The history of email
In a demonstration held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961, a system was presented where several users connected from remote terminals to an IBM 7094 and stored files to share information.
But in 1965, email began to be used on a time-sharing supercomputer (concurrently sharing a computational resource). And a year later the service was so widespread that it was used in computer networks of several organizations.
But email as we know it today appeared in 1971, and the person responsible is Ray Tomlinson (tomlinson@bbn-tenexa). Ray had the idea of incorporating the '@' symbol as a separator between the user and the computer where the mail is hosted (now email providers). This strange symbol was chosen by Ray Tomlinson because it did not exist in any name or surname.
The @ symbol
Its origin (Arabic) is in a ligature (a sign formed by the union of two or more minimal writing units 'graphemes'), first calligraphic and then typographic, which represented in the Anglo-Saxon paleographic tradition the Latin preposition 'ado', or conjunction 'at' in Spanish cursive Gothic writing. And in procedural writing it represents the digraph 'an' (within ASCII code, it is represented by the number 64).
But Ray Tomlinson takes it from Lambert typewriters, developed starting in the late nineteenth century, which included the @ symbol due to its commercial use (it used a teletype model keyboard). And that is how Ray sent the first email from a PDP-10 computer to another, using the email address “tomlinson@bbn-tenexa”.
How email works
Email cannot be sent between computers. When a person writes an email they need an application (Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird) or a web service.
Both platforms will ask for three parameters: add one or more “recipients” (email addresses), a “subject” (short description as a title), and the “message” (text and multimedia material, with or without formatting).
Email today
The use of email as a communication system has become outdated compared to the appearance of new platforms, such as social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) or communication environments like Skype or WhatsApp. Users communicate in real time with these new platforms and email has been relegated.
For this reason, large providers like Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook are offering a new design in the inbox, so we can manage our emails in a modern way (also to combat spam).
If we think that the Roman Empire had a 'Praeco', which were town criers who traveled through the city orally communicating the news. Today we have real-time communication that breaks down the barriers of distance.
