For the French, it may always remind them of delicious escargot, but for most everyone else the @ symbol has come to embody the age of the Internet and its constantly evolving language. In honor of the little squiggly's potency, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York announced on Monday that it had added the @ symbol to its architecture and design collection, citing its "design power." The symbol's association with the Internet dates back to 1971 when the @ symbol appeared in the first email ever, sent by engineer Ray Tomlinson.
Raymond Samuel Tomlinson (born 1941, Amsterdam, New York) is a programmer who implemented an email system in 1971 on the ARPANet. Email had been previously sent on other networks such as AUTODIN and PLATO. It was the first system able to send mail between users on different hosts connected to the ARPAnet (previously, mail could be sent only to others who used the same computer). To achieve this, he used the @ sign to separate the user from their machine, which has been used in email addresses ever since.
The first email Tomlinson (seen left) sent was a test e-mail. It was not preserved and Tomlinson describes it as insignificant, something like "QWERTYUIOP". This is commonly misquoted as "The first e-mail was QWERTYUIOP". Tomlinson later commented that these "test messages were entirely forgettable and I have, therefore, forgotten them."
At first, his email messaging system wasn't thought to be a big deal. When Tomlinson showed it to his colleague Jerry Burchfiel, he said "Don't tell anyone! This isn't what we're supposed to be working on."
After graduating from RPI, he entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to continue his electrical engineering education. At MIT, Tomlinson worked in the Speech Communication Group and developed an analog-digital hybrid speech synthesizer as the subject of his Master's thesis. He received a S.M. in Electrical Engineering degree in 1965.
In 1967 he joined the technology company of Bolt, Beranek and Newman, now BBN Technologies, where he helped develop the TENEX operating system including ARPANET Network Control Protocol and TELNET implementations. He wrote a file-transfer program called CPYNET to transfer files through the ARPANET. Tomlinson was asked to change a program called SNDMSG, which sent messages to other users of a time-sharing computer, to run on TENEX. He added code he took from CPYNET to SNDMSG so messages could be sent to users on other computers ó the first email.
In 2000 he received the George R. Stibitz Computer Pioneer Award from the American Computer Museum (with the Computer Science Department of Montana State University). In 2001 he received a Webby Award from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences for lifetime achievement. Also in 2001 he was inducted into the Rensselaer Alumni Hall of Fame. In 2002 Discover Magazine awarded him its Innovation Award. In 2004, he received the IEEE Internet Award along with Dave Crocker. In 2009, he along with Martin Cooper was awarded the Prince of Asturias award for scientific and technical research.
The @ symbol, currently used every day by millions around the world in email addresses, text messages and on twitter.com, is thought to be ancient, the museum said, possibly dating back to the sixth century. Because the symbol is not a concrete thing but an abstract idea, it has changed meaning many times in the course of its existence.
Calling it a "design act," the museum celebrated the @ sign's multiplicity of meanings, from symbolizing a dog for Russians and a cat to Finns, to becoming ubiquitous in modern email exchanges.
"The @ symbol is now part of the very fabric of life all over the world," said Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of the Department of Architecture and Design, in a blog posted Monday on the museum's website. "It has truly become a way of expressing society's changing technological and social relationships, expressing new forms of behavior and interaction in a new world," he said.
By adding the symbol to its collection, the museum called the move an acquisition, but the museum does not obtain ownership of the symbol -- which remains in the public realm.
"It is a momentous, elating acquisition that makes us all proud," said Antonelli, celebrating the move as a daring feat because it shows that "physical possession of an object as a requirement for an acquisition is no longer necessary."
courtesy: Basil Katz, Christine Kearne, and Todd Eastham
