Raymond Tomlinson died, the creator of the email – publico

                 

                         
                     

                 

 
 

Raymond Tomlinson was a legend of the Internet. In 1971, he turned up a few millimeters of what should be their work and took a giant step towards global communication network that would create two decades later – invented the email. Saturday, aged 74, died of what is suspected to have been a myocardial attack.

The news “very sad” was given on Twitter by Vinton Cerf, Google evangelist chief for the Internet and other of network pioneers (creator of TCP / IP). Were both nominated for the Internet Hall of Fame in the same year, in 2012, and had been awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Scientific and Technical Research (Cerf in 2002, Tomlinson in 2009).

born in the tiny city of Amsterdam, in the state of New York, Raymond Tomlinson began to study electronic engineering close to home, at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he arrived to collaborate with IBM. He graduated and made his way to MIT, where he got a master’s degree in the same area. In 1967, he entered the Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) to work on developing an operating system for the ARPAnet

This network -. Which is the precursor to the Internet – was a project funded by the Department of Defense US with the aim of connecting computers and servers in different locations, possibly to prevent a nuclear attack on the US. It was a contribution of rides which was asked to developers as Tomlinson. But the crucial moment of his career came when he decided to work in secret in a parallel project.

Tomlinson was also linked to a project of sending messages and files at BBN. I had in hand a program designed SNDMSG, allowing exchange information between users of the same computer. Its function – it was just to improve the program – evolved in absentia of leaders for what would result in the email system bases that continued to use to this day (and do not suspect that this will change soon .)

it was the month of October 1971 when Raymond Tomlinson made history by sending an email to yourself – but from one computer to another. To achieve this, we had to separate the recipient’s name e-mail server. It considered various symbols to make this separation, to realize that the at sign (@) was not used in any name. .

Tomlinson showed his invention to a colleague, Jerry Burchfiel, which in 1998 recalled the moment Speaking to Forbes : “When he showed me, said, ‘Do not say To nobody! It is this that is supposed to be working! ‘ “Two years later, in 1973, the exchange of e-mails constituted 75% of the ARPAnet traffic. Today it is a commonplace practice for both personal and professional, and occurs without dazzle or transgressive spirit

Ray. – The diminutive why it was treated – continued to work at BBN. In 1987 came the chief engineer. The NVT and TCP / IP protocols have their contributions. In an interview with The Verge in 2012, talked about his iconic invention to say that the route to be used, “in general, exactly the way you imagined.”