The story of @

It was the first email ever sent.

It was also the beginning of ascent of @ from oblivion to become the symbolic linchpin of a revolution of modern social connectedness.

 

It was 1971.
Computer scientist Ray Tomlinson was facing a vexing problem: how to connect people at two different computers ?

By 1970s, Computers were able to print out nice letters and memos. Basically each programmer was connected to a particular mainframe machine via a phone connection and a teletypewriter machine and they can print out beautiful letters. But it was unthinkable how to send that message from one computer to it’s neighbor without physically taking a print out and handing over.

Lawrence Robert, the father of internet had by then hooked up different computers by telephone lines.

Now, Tomlinson’s challenge was how to address a message created by one person in computer A and sent through Arpanet to someone at a computer B without confusion.

It is obvious each message had one specific author who had written it in a specific computer. This must reach the target person to be read in a different computer. Thus each address must be a couple- an individual’s name separated from his computer’s name by a special character lest computers be confused.

Tomlinson did not have a lot of options. He thought an equal sign would be a better for this than an exclamation, period or a comma.

At that moment, his eyes eyes fell on @, poised above “P” on his Model 33 teletypewriter. A nearly obsolete key soon to be lost into oblivion. He was mesmerized by it’s graceful character.

He didn’t know that It’s first documented use was in 1536, in a letter by Francesco Lapi, a Florentine merchant, who used @ to denote units of wine called amphorae. Since then it’s sparsely used by merchants to denote ‘at the rate of’ and is going to be deleted from standard keyboards any day.

Using @ in his naming system, Tomlinson sent himself an e-mail, which traveled from one teletype in his room, through Arpanet, and back to a different teletype in his room.

It was the first email ever sent.

It was also the beginning of ascent of @ from oblivion to become the symbolic linchpin of a revolution of modern social connectedness.

Like humans, the career graph of these lifeless characters are also decided by fate.