Ray Tomlinson, inventor of email, dies at 74

Washington: Ray Tomlinson, the inventor of email, is no more. According to reports, the American programmer died of an apparent heart attack on Saturday. He was 74 years old.

It is said that Tomlinson sent the very first email in 1971 while working as an engineer for research company Bolt, Beranek and Newman, in Boston. The company played a big role in developing an early version of the Internet, known as ARPANET.

In 1971, Tomlinson implemented the first email system on the ARPANET system. It was the first system able to send mail between users on different hosts connected to the ARPANET.

His invention included the ground-breaking use of the @ sign to separate the user from their machine, which has been used in email addresses ever since.

In 2012, Tomlinson was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame by the Internet Society.