E-mail
Electronic mail, or e-mail (sometimes spelt email), was
first developed in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson at BBN who sent
the first e-mail
using the @ sign. One of the most famous stories of the
use of e-mail in its early days was in 1973 when Leonard
Kleinrock in the USA sent a message to Larry Roberts in
the UK. Kleinrock had been at a conference in England
and left his electric razor behind. He asked Roberts by
an e-mail to retrieve it for him. Roberts was online at
the time the message was sent, so it was a synchronous
communication, more like an online chat than an e-mail
as we know it today.
E-mail is
one of the most popular and important uses of the Internet.
Over the last few years it has revolutionised the way
we communicate, both at work and home. It’s hard
to imagine now what life would be like without e-mail.
It can take only seconds between an e-mail being sent
and being delivered. We think nothing of sending a message
to someone across the other side of the world in the
evening and expecting a reply to be there for us when
we wake up the following morning.
And it’s
produced a whole new culture – a world of short,
text messages with its own netiquette and language of
emoticons ;-) Emoticons are fun, but play an important
function in a short text message, they set the tone,
giving a visual cue as to the author’s mood. Turn
your head sideways to look at the emoticons below and
see how they resemble facial expressions.
-) tongue in cheek
:-) smiley face
;-) wink
:-P poked out tongue
:-/ uh-oh (to name just a few)
