Email is 30. It was all the way back in 1971 that email first
flew onto the scene.
The first "successful" email was sent using a 300-baud
modem. Yes, that reads "300 baud." The concept of "K"
wasn't quite in existence yet when it came to modems.
The man who sent the first email was an engineer named
Ray Tomlinson. Ray worked for Bolt Beranek and
Newman (BBN), the company hired by the United States
Defense Department in 1968 to build ARPANET. His
specific project was something called SNDMSG. If you
read it out loud, it comes out as "Send Message." Well,
SNDMSG wasn't all that great. It could only send
messages between two people found on the same
machine. That wasn't at all email like we know it today.
In fact, when SNDMSG worked, the mail was "sent" by
adding text to the end of an existing mail file.
Tomlinson started a new course he called CYPNET. It
consisted of around 200 lines of code. What he did
would make history. He added the "@" insignia to the
email name.
Now files could be sent along the ARPANET backbone.
The "@" told the computer the end user was somewhere
other than the sending server. Email had been born.
The message went from Tomlinson to Tomlinson. BBN
had two systems hooked together through the
ARPANET.
The first message sent in Morse Code on May 24, 1844
was, "What hath God wrought."
The first message sent over Graham Bell's telephone on
March 10, 1876 was, "Mr. Watson, come here; I want
you."
The first words to a phonograph in 1877, by The Wizard
of Menlo Park, Thomas Edison were, "Mary had a little
lamb."
The first words said from the moon in 1969 were,
"Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."
The first words sent over email were...uh...we don't
actually know.
Tomlinson himself cannot say with any degree of
certainty what the first email message read. To be frank,
he doesn't even remember the actual date of the first
sending. It was in late 1971, most likely this month...we
think. (September).
Some articles stated that the first message was probably
gibberish created from Tomlinson just banging out some
letters on his keyboard. A good number of articles, that I
read, said the first email message was most likely,
"QWERTYUIOP."
The only thing about the first email message Tomlinson
can say for sure is that it was in all capital letters.
Can you remember yours?
Happy birthday email! Thanks to you Mr. Tomlinson.
You're place in Internet history is quite reserved.

FYI - There is a rumor going around that the US government is going to start charging 5-cents for every e-mail that is sent. This is false. There is no Internet tax pending. This is one of those e-mail hoaxes that just will not die.