Email Inventor Ray Tomlinson Dies At 74 (techrepublic.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Sunday March 6, 2016 @04:01AM from the rest-in-peace dept.

vikingpower writes: ARPAnet pioneer and networking legend Ray Tomlinson, who is best known for his contributions in developing email standards, has died at 74. Tomlinson was best known for choosing the @ symbol to indicate a message should be sent to a different computer on a network. He also led development of standards for the from, subject, and date fields found in every email message sent today. When Tomlinson first showed his invention to his colleague Jerry Burchfiel, Tomlinson said, "Don't tell anyone! This isn't what we're supposed to be working on." May Ray rest in peace in /dev/null.

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Re:@ symbol... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-06 04:21 · Score: 5, Insightful

I would have put the apostrophe key on a 35 foot extension, since most people seem unable to grasp that it's means it is.
Re:@ symbol... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-06 05:38 · Score: 5, Insightful

Only thing I wish he had done - make the thing case SENSITIVE. Like Foo@Bar.com would have been different from foo@bar.com or FOO@BAR.COM.
Which would have lead to endless confusion, leaks due to case bugs, and phishing attacks. Thank goodness he took the smart option.