Email was invented in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson, who developed a system to send messages between computers connected to ARPANET, the precursor to the internet. He also introduced the use of the "@" symbol to separate the user name from the computer name in an email address, a format that is still used today. The first message he sent was a test message likely consisting of random characters such as "qwertyuiop." Email became widely adopted within ARPANET communications by 1973 and later gained popularity with the rise of the internet and webmail services in the 1990s.
