Hello and welcome to this day an esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, December 1971, a man by the name of Ray Tomlinson, working at Arpenet, began sending the first messages from one computer to another that you could roughly call something that we now recognize as email.

I'll just say there is a lot that is murky in this story including the date,

so late 1971 is when Tomlinson was a computer programmer working with the Arpenet network, which is the precursor to the modern internet.

And as we'll see, his memory is kind of fuzzy about this story, kind of lovably fuzzy around this story.

So he doesn't know the exact date or the exact detail, so we don't have to sweat the exact date,

we'll get into it.

But Tomlinson was playing around trying to send messages across Arpenet, and he was also starting to include addresses that

had the app sign which would allow you to distinguish who was sending at what

organization so yeah we can see that this is basically something resembling modern email.

And it all sort of came together somewhat haphazardly.

A couple years later, there was this internal report that read, quote, it just happened. and its early history has seemed more like the

discovery of a natural phenomenon than deliberate development of a new technology.

So super interesting to think about how this came together and obviously how it changed everything here to talk

I was gonna say not digitally but we're on Zoom but at least it's a little more than email right?

Yeah sure but but here together to talk

the early days of email are as always Nicole hammer of oh wait I should say

Nicole hammer at vanderbuilt. E.. And Heli Carter Jackson at Wellesley, I need to you.

Hello, Jenny.

Hello.

Hey there.

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