Invention that seemed mundane becomes pervasive part of life

02/19/2002

By DOUG BEDELL / The Dallas Morning News

If you haven't noticed, most Internet denizens aren't whining about the financial flops of "The Great Dot-Com Bubble." That's chiefly because, in its brief run as a mass medium, the Net is a proven provider of miracles for millions.

With their simple, cheap capacity to transmit text messages, the Internet and e-mail have become a vital part of life, health, commerce and the pursuit of happiness. After all, that's how this whole thing got started in 1971 – with text messaging over ARPANET, the first network of computers.

In many ways, the emerging, post-party Internet 2002 has remained just as its founding fathers envisioned – a network of many, sharing and collaborating, arguing and agreeing on vital issues of life and work.

Venture capitalists may have thought they could transform the technology into a TV-like cash cow. But, in the end, it remains all about text and simple, wonderful human communication.

The 30th birthday of e-mail passed with hardly a mention in the mainstream press late last year. Perhaps that is symptomatic of a basic human flaw when dealing with technologies: We absorb the great ones so effortlessly into our lives that those "Eureka!" moments quickly become "been there, done that."

Ray Tomlinson is no different.

Mr. Tomlinson, then an engineer at BBN Technologies in Cambridge, Mass., sent the first e-mail message in late 1971 while trying to find a reason to network two humongous, side-by-side TENEX time-sharing computers.

"The test messages were entirely forgettable, and I have, therefore, forgotten them," said Mr. Tomlinson ( users.rcn.com/rtomlinson/ray). "Most likely the first message was QWERTYUIOP or something similar."

The next year, Mr. Tomlinson authored a simple, 200-line program called SNDMSG that used an @ symbol to designate that e-mail should be sent to a user at a specific location. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Mr. Tomlinson received no patents or cash prizes for this contribution. He was invited to no IPO party like those thrown for the thousands of lesser, multimillion-dollar Internet "inventions" churned out during the go-go '90s.

Yet when we look back on the last several decades of technology, the advent of e-mail and networked text transmissions will undoubtedly be hailed as a development that fundamentally changed our lives.

By all rights, Mr. Tomlinson's first e-mail efforts should be regarded on par with the breathless first telegraph transmission sent by Samuel B. Morse ("What hath God wrought!") and Alexander Graham Bell's inaugural phone call ("Mr. Watson, come here; I want you.")

But, alas, "QUERTYIOP" lacks cache. And, like a true engineer, Mr. Tomlinson regarded his efforts as minor contributions to a much wider team mission.

It wasn't until seven years later – after experimenting daily with text communications – that ARPANET's innovators began to realize e-mail's potential.

Said a 1978 report by Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers: "There is little doubt that the techniques of network mail developed in connection with the ARPANET program are going to sweep the country and drastically change the techniques used for intercommunication in the public and private sectors."

The personal computer boom of the mid-1980s began the gradual ascension to that lofty perch in our everyday lives.

Throughout the ensuing years, as Web browsers made their debut and compelled the masses to take to the Net, it has been easy to forget that e-mail remains the one true killer Internet application.

Meta group researchers recently estimated that global daily e-mail traffic has surpassed 15 billion messages. By 2005, that figure will climb to 35 billion. Like it or not, that daily traffic includes spam, the cheapest and most cost-effective mass advertising medium ever devised.

With e-mail, we have discovered a medium perfectly suited to conveying bursts of emotion and an incredible breadth of information. Its reach allows us to comfort the house-bound and afflicted. It has spawned discussion board and newsgroup networks between humans of like and disparate interests.

It has formed an umbrella of emotional support during times of personal and national crisis. During the Sept. 11 tragedy, for example, more than 100 million Americans received or sent messages of comfort and concern related to the attacks, a recent survey found.

Yet, in all the grand flourish of recent Internet growth and the subsequent burst of the bubble, Mr. Tomlinson's contribution seems to be lost.

Mr. Tomlinson was recently asked whether he thought e-mail would ever gain the stature of other inventions such as the telephone and telegraph.

"The pace [of progress] has accelerated tremendously," he said. "This means that any single development is stepping on the heels of the previous one and is so closely followed by the next that most advances are obscured.

"I think that few individuals will be remembered," Mr. Tomlinson said. "I am curious to find out if I am wrong."