The internet has brought us so many conveniences, e-mail being one of the biggest.
The man credited with inventing the e-mail, Ray Tomlinson, is dead, the Independent reports. Tomlinson, who worked with a firm involved in the early days of developing the internet, passed away via an apparent heart attack.
Raytheon Company, the firm he has worked with for decades, confirmed his death in a statement.
“A true technology pioneer, Ray was the man who brought us email in the early days of networked computers,” Raytheon spokesman Mike Doble said in a statement.
Tomlinson was working with Raytheon, then Bolt, Beranek and Newman, when he made his groundbreaking invention in 1971. He thought of a form of electronic communication to be sent between networks, and his use of the symbol @ has remained in use, now an iconic part of electronic messaging.
74 year old Tomlinson hailed from Amsterdam, New York, and was a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2012.