SUBJECT: the date of the first email. FROM: Ray Tomlinson:
Harry Forsdick wrote:
What date do you use?
Unless pressed, I say late 1971. Pressed a little bit, I say probably October or November. I think it was Yahoo that wanted to celebrate the birthday of email and they chose a specific date that I don't recall offhand.
What happened 40 years ago was the transmission of the first packet (sometimes called message) between hosts on two imps of the ARPANet. That did happen in California, but the first email (not yet called email at the time) was sent from TOMLINSON@BBN-TENEXB to TOMLINSON@BBN-TENEXA here in Cambridge in late 1971.