Click and send this story: Email is 55 years old


By Dr. Tim Sandle
SCIENCE EDITOR

DIGITAL JOURNAL

April 14, 2026


Image: — © AFP,File Cole BURSTON

We see the @ sign every day, a symbol that has been around for centuries. Yet it only became what it is today because of a small decision in the early days of email (or ‘e-mail‘ – the hyphenated form, e-mail, was the original spelling and is still preferred by some style guides like Merriam-Webster and The Chicago Manual of Style).

The origins of electronic mail evolved from simple messages on shared computers in the 1960s to a global communication standard using protocols like SMTP, POP3, and IMAP.

Yet it was only when a message was shared between two different types of computers that ‘e-mail’ is commonly regarded to have begun.

When MIT graduate Ray Tomlinson sent the first email in 1971, he chose the @ symbol – an old, obscure character at the time (commonly called the at symbol). Today, that symbol is used billions of times a day and is instantly recognized across languages and systems.


Email Day is April 23, the birthday of Ray Tomlinson, the computing legend who sent the first email.

In 1971, Ray Tomlinson sent the first email between two computers connected to the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). He chose the @ symbol to separate the user from the machine, Zero Bounce reports. ARPANET, together with the TCP/IP protocol suite, became the foundation of the Internet.

Years later, when asked about the invention, Tomilson said simply: “It seemed like a neat idea.”

The sign was commonly used as an accounting and invoice abbreviation meaning “at a rate of”. In scientific and technical literature, @ is used to describe the conditions under which data are valid or a measurement has been made.

The Internet Hall of Fame states: “Tomlinson’s email program brought about a complete revolution, fundamentally changing the way people communicate.”

Cross-cultural meanings

The symbol has also evolved beyond its technical role. Depending on the language, people now imagine it very differently: a snail in Italian, a monkey in German, even a strudel in Hebrew.In Russian, it is commonly called соба[ч]ка (soba[ch]ka – ‘[little] dog’).
In Greek, it is called παπάκι meaning ‘duckling’.
In Ukrainian, it is commonly called ет (et – ‘at’) or Равлик (ravlyk), which means ‘snail’.
In Hungarian, it is called kukac (a playful synonym for ‘worm’ or ‘maggot’).
In Faroese, it is kurla, hjá (‘at’), tranta, or snápil-a (‘[elephant’s] trunk A’).

The earliest yet discovered symbol in this shape is found in a 1345 Bulgarian translation of a Greek chronicle written by Constantinos Manasses.
Email: 55 years old

This year marks 55 years since that first email, and there are few, other small design decisions that scaled this widely. The @ sign turned into a global standard, and then into something cultural.

The widespread use of e-mail among the general population began after the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) protocol was successfully implemented on the ARPANET in 1983.

The content of that first email? Tomlinson said it was “entirely forgettable,” but likely a string of characters like “QWERTYUIOP.”