Ray Tomlinson – widely regarded as the inventor of the email – has died, aged 74, Digital Spy said.
The programmer chose the famous @ sign to use in addresses, and is also credited with sending the first email.
He died of a reported heart attack on Saturday (March 5), and his death has led to tributes from the likes of Gmail:
Thank you, Ray Tomlinson, for inventing email and putting the @ sign on the map. #RIP
— Gmail (@gmail) March 6, 2016
Tomlinson was working at Massachusetts research and development company Bolt, Beranek and Newman in 1971 when he sent a message between two side-by-side computers on the ARPANET system.
Since its invention, trillions of emails have been sent and around 4 billion accounts exist.
He admitted that he could not remember what the first message he sent was, saying: "Most likely the first message was QWERTYUIOP or something similar."
He also revealed: "I used the @ sign to indicate that the user was 'at' some other host rather than being local."
Tomlinson was also important in developing services for network mail, such as defining a place to put inbound email on a user's machine, as well as developing an agent to move email between machines.
He also contributed to the development of the email subject line.
Tomlinson was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2012.
