In the early days of the web – then called the Arpanet  (“The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network”) – an engineer by the name of Ray Tomlinson had an idea.   He actually wanted to develop a program to send a file to another user on the same time-sharing computer.   The program worked and was quickly, and easily, adapted to send files across a network.

It’s interesting how some of the greatest innovations are birthed in the idle time of a very bright person, who’s simply tinkering.    Tomlinson’s employer - The United States Department of Defense – hadn’t as much as hinted at the need for any such program nor proposed that he develop anything of the sort.   It was simply something which seemed interesting to Tomlinson and which he thought could possibly be useful  - and it became the internet’s first “killer application”.

Meet the “father of email” - Ray Tomlinson…