What you are going to find when you search for the history of email is that no one seems to agree on when it began or when the first message was sent. There are some common stories that tell the same tale, but other sources seem to believe otherwise. Whatever the case, email started out small, and was not thought to be what it would become in our modern times. It was a convenient way for a few to get in touch easily though their computers when the Internet as we know it was pretty much nothing more than a concept, if that.

Compatible Time Sharing System (or CTSS) was first used at MIT in the year 1961, according to some online sources. Others claim that email did not come into being until 1965, and some put the date in the 1970s. Whatever the case, early email was a simple message sent with a variety of commands to send such a message to someone on another computer. Some say the first person to do this was Ray Tomlinson and his first message was not sent until 1972.

Mr. Tomlinson was the person that decided that the @ symbol was what could tell a computer that the message within the email was mail, and where it should be sent. You can think of the information after the @ as the way to tell to which computer system the message should be sent, and the letters or numbers before that symbol specify a person or a specific computer terminal.

You may not have dealt with spam email until the Internet was becoming more widespread, (some time in the 1990s), but it has actually been around since the 1970s. The first spam-like emails sent were not about Viagra, but they were unsolicited none the less. The messages were more benign, but unwelcome all the same. Today, this is one of the biggest problems we have with electronic mail.

Today, email is used everywhere and by almost everyone with access to a computer. Spam emails are everywhere, and so are emails meant to scam you or even to scare you. Though in the early days there was no reason to hide the origin of any message, many try to do that today. If you have a problem figuring out who sent something, use a free email lookup to see what you can find out about the sender.