Stone to Silicon

Communication · 1971

Email

Ray Tomlinson picks the @ sign, and messages start moving between computers.

In 1971 Ray Tomlinson at BBN sent the first network email between two computers on ARPANET, using @ to separate user and host. Email quickly became ARPANET's most used application and remains a core internet service with billions of users.

See it in the living treeWikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Letters and parcels handled in the UK Latest: 16.7B items per year (1993) Source: Our World in Data

Internet users in the United States Latest: 322M people (2024) Source: Our World in Data

Share of people online Latest: 73.6 % (2025) Source: Our World in Data