TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Ray Tomlinson, the man known for inventing the electronic mail (email), died at the age of 74. "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.
Doble said that Tomlinson died on Saturday morning, but did not confirm the cause of death. Tomlinson worked in the company's office in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Tomlinson died from a heart attack.
The tech world is mourning over the death of Tomlinson, the founder of ARPANET - the Internet’s predecessor –in 1971. Back then, the ARPANET allows people to send personal messages to other computer users through servers.
"Thank you, Ray Tomlinson, for inventing email and putting the '@' sign on the map," read a Tweet from Gmail's official Twitter account.
Originally from Amsterdam, New York, Tomlinson went to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and MIT in the 1960s, and was working at a research and development company Bolt Beranek and Newman – now Raytheon BBN Technologies – when he invented the email.
ANTARA