We use it almost every day and for most things online. So who was it that invented the e-mail?

Ray Tomlinson gave society one of the greatest communication tools in history. He invented email back in 1971 -- essentially fostering global business communication and turning the Internet into a digital kitchen table for far-flung family members.

It soon became obvious that the ARPANET was becoming a human- communication medium with very important advantages over normal U.S. mail and over telephone calls. One of the advantages of the message systems over letter mail was that, in an ARPANET message, one could write tersely and type imperfectly, even to an older person in a superior position and even to a person one did not know very well, and the recipient took no offense. The formality and perfection that most people expect in a typed letter did not become associated with network messages, probably because the network was so much faster, so much more like the telephone.

- J.C.R. Licklider, Albert Vezza, Applications of Information Networks, Proc of the IEEE, 66(11), Nov 1978.

MIT first demonstrated the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) in 1961.[17] It allowed multiple users to log into the IBM 7094[18] from remote dial-up terminals, and to store files online on disk. This new ability encouraged users to share information in new ways. E-mail started in 1965 as a way for multiple users of a time-sharing mainframe computer to communicate. Although the exact history is murky, among the first systems to have such a facility were SDC's Q32 and MIT's CTSS

Ray Tomlinson contributed heavily to the invention of email.

AL GORE