Email is Forty Years Old This Month

October 1971, a string of characters was sent from one computer to another by Ray Tomlinson heralding the age of email. From that humble beginning, its use grew in use on ARPANET and finally evolved to its use on a wide basis on the Internet. Happy 40th birthday!

As Tomlinson told The Times in 2008, he doesn’t remember what that first email actually said – perhaps ‘QWERTY’ or another string of characters, but whatever it was, it traveled a distance of one meter between two separate computers

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What's e-mail, again? Is that like Twitter or something?

whatever it was, it traveled a distance of one meter between two separate computers

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Replace "computers" with "phones", and you've got text messaging today!

Mr. Perfect said:

Replace "computers" with "phones", and you've got text messaging today!

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You know it is rather funny that the original communication was effectively a text message. After that we innovated, evolved and improved email to a robust communications platform. Then apparently somewhere along the line the whole thing devolved and we are now back to using technology that is effectively 40 years old and gladly paying stupid monthly charges for the "Privilege" to use it.