INVENTOR

Ray Tomlinson

1941 - 2016

Photo of Ray Tomlinson

Icon of person Ray Tomlinson

Raymond Samuel Tomlinson (April 23, 1941 – March 5, 2016) was an American computer programmer who implemented the first email program on the ARPANET system, the precursor to the Internet, in 1971; It was the first system able to send mail between users on different hosts connected to 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 name from the name of their machine, a scheme which has been used in email addresses ever since. The Internet Hall of Fame in its account of his work commented "Tomlinson's email program brought about a complete revolution, fundamentally changing the way people communicate". Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Ray Tomlinson has received more than 803,519 page views. His biography is available in 46 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 45 in 2019). Ray Tomlinson is the 81st most popular inventor (down from 75th in 2019), the 889th most popular biography from United States (down from 789th in 2019) and the 20th most popular American Inventor.

Ray Tompkins is most famous for his comic strip, "Calvin and Hobbes."

Memorability Metrics

  • 800k

    Page Views (PV)

  • 71.36

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 46

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 7.86

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 3.28

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Page views of Ray Tomlinsons by language


Among INVENTORS

Among inventors, Ray Tomlinson ranks 81 out of 355. Before him are Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, Alois Senefelder, Edmund Cartwright, Henry Bessemer, John Harrison, and Alphonse Bertillon. After him are Étienne-Jules Marey, Percy Spencer, Bi Sheng, Momofuku Ando, Johann Maria Farina, and Charles K. Kao.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1941, Ray Tomlinson ranks 49. Before him are Ivan Gašparovič, Jordi Savall, Jürgen Prochnow, Anne Rice, Ivica Osim, and Dan Shechtman. After him are Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, Chick Corea, Viktor Zubkov, Nathalie Delon, Michael D. Higgins, and Frank Farian. Among people deceased in 2016, Ray Tomlinson ranks 46. Before him are Zsa Zsa Gabor, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Walter Scheel, George Gaynes, and Michael Cimino. After him are Ettore Scola, James Cronin, Harry Kroto, Jacques Rivette, Michèle Morgan, and Junko Tabei.

Others Born in 1941

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Others Deceased in 2016

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In United States

Among people born in United States, Ray Tomlinson ranks 889 out of 15,968. Before him are Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913), Martin Seligman (1942), Robert Rauschenberg (1925), Daniel Keyes (1927), Robert Solow (1924), and John L. Hall (1934). After him are Richard Dean Anderson (1950), Richard Crenna (1926), Eliot Ness (1903), Cyndi Lauper (1953), William P. Murphy (1892), and Thomas Pynchon (1937).

Others born in United States

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Among INVENTORS In United States

Among inventors born in United States, Ray Tomlinson ranks 20. Before him are Steve Wozniak (1950), Josephine Cochrane (1839), Les Paul (1915), John Deere (1804), George Eastman (1854), and John Browning (1855). After him are Percy Spencer (1894), Leo Fender (1909), Jacque Fresco (1916), Robert Noyce (1927), Hiram Maxim (1840), and Elisha Otis (1811).

American born Inventors

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