The History of Email: How It All Started and Where We Are Today

Think about how many times you use email in a day. You might receive an OTP, send a work update, reset a password, or get a receipt for something you bought online.

It's so normal that most of us never stop to think about how it started.

But email is much older than Gmail, smartphones, and the web browser you're probably reading this article in. Its story goes back to the days when computers were massive machines used mainly by researchers and universities.

So, who actually invented email? And how did it become something billions of people rely on today?

Let's go back to the beginning.

Before email, computers had their own messaging systems

In the 1960s, computers weren't personal devices. They were expensive machines shared by multiple users, often through terminals connected to a central computer.

People working on the same system sometimes needed to leave messages for each other. Early messaging tools made this possible, but there was a catch: the messages generally stayed within that computer system.

Sending a message to someone using a completely different computer was another challenge.

Researchers began exploring ways to connect computers and share information across networks. One of the projects that came out of this work was ARPANET, an early network that helped lay the groundwork for the modern internet.

And that's where the story of modern email gets interesting.

1971: The engineer behind modern email

In 1971, Ray Tomlinson was working at Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), a company involved in developing ARPANET.

He worked on a way to send messages between users on different computers connected to the network. Earlier systems could leave messages for people on the same machine, but Tomlinson's work made network messaging possible.

He's widely credited with developing the first network email application of this kind.

There's another part of his work that you probably use every day: the @ symbol.

Tomlinson needed a way to separate a user's name from the computer they were using. He chose @ because it was available on the keyboard and made sense in an address.

The format eventually evolved into what we recognise today:

username@example.com

The first message wasn't some carefully written announcement. It was a test, and Tomlinson later recalled it as something forgettable, often described as random characters typed on a keyboard.

Funny enough, one of the most important developments in internet history started with a message nobody was meant to remember.

1972: Email starts becoming useful

Sending a message was one thing. Managing dozens of them was another.

In 1972, computer scientist Larry Roberts developed an email utility for ARPANET. It made it easier to list messages, read them, save them, forward them, and reply.

This might sound basic now, but it made email much more practical.

Researchers could send information without needing the other person to be sitting at their computer at the same time. A message could wait until the recipient was ready to read it.

That idea is still one of email's biggest advantages today. Unlike a phone call, email doesn't require both people to be available at once.

The 1980s: Email gets a common language

As more computers joined networks, another problem appeared. Different systems didn't always communicate in the same way.

If email was going to work across networks, computers needed a common set of rules for sending messages.

In 1982, SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) was documented in RFC 821. It established a standard method for transferring email between servers.

SMTP is still an important part of email delivery today.

Here's a simple way to think about it: when you send an email, your mail system needs a way to hand that message over to the system responsible for delivering it. SMTP helps make that exchange possible.

Email was moving beyond a feature of a particular computer and becoming a standard internet service.

The 1990s: Email reaches ordinary people

For a while, email was mainly associated with universities, research organisations, and workplaces. That changed as personal computers and internet access became more common.

Online services started offering messaging to a much wider audience. But accessing email could still depend on which service or software you used.

Then came webmail.

Hotmail changes how people access email

In 1996, Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith co-founded Hotmail.

The idea was straightforward: let people access their email through a web browser rather than requiring them to use a particular computer or installed email program.

That made a real difference. You could check your messages from different computers, provided you had an internet connection and a browser.

Hotmail helped popularise free web-based email. Microsoft acquired the service in 1997, bringing it into its growing range of online products.

Yahoo Mail also launched in 1997, adding another major name to the growing webmail market.

Email was no longer just something you used at work or university. It was becoming part of everyday life.

2004: Gmail raises the bar

Google launched Gmail on April 1, 2004.

The launch date made some people wonder whether it was an April Fools' joke. The service's generous storage offer was another reason it attracted attention.

Gmail initially offered 1 GB of storage to early users, far more than many competing free email services at the time.

But storage wasn't the only thing that mattered. Gmail made searching through messages easier and grouped related emails into conversations. Instead of constantly deleting messages or manually organising everything, users could keep more mail and find it when needed.

It changed people's expectations of what a free email service should offer.

Today, Gmail is one of the biggest email services in the world, alongside other services from Microsoft, Apple, and various independent providers.

Email became essential, and so did spam

As email grew, not everyone used it responsibly.

Businesses started sending bulk promotions. Scammers sent fraudulent messages. Some senders flooded inboxes with irrelevant advertising.

Spam became one of email's biggest problems.

Email providers responded with increasingly sophisticated filters to identify unwanted messages, malicious attachments, suspicious links, and phishing attempts.

At the same time, organisations needed better ways to prove that an email claiming to come from their domain was actually authorised by them.

Three technologies are particularly important here:

• SPF helps identify which servers are authorised to send email for a domain.
• DKIM adds a digital signature that receiving systems can verify.
• DMARC lets domain owners specify how receiving systems should handle messages that fail authentication checks.

These aren't just concerns for large email providers. If you're building an application that sends password resets, receipts, or notifications, email authentication can make the difference between reaching someone's inbox and having your messages rejected.

Email on smartphones changed everything again

The next major shift came when email moved onto phones.

Previously, checking email often meant opening a computer and logging in. Smartphones made it possible to receive messages while travelling, shopping, or sitting in a café.

Push notifications meant people could respond almost immediately. Email became more convenient, but it also became harder to ignore.

For businesses, it turned into a core part of almost every online workflow. Password resets, account verification, invoices, order confirmations, product updates, and customer support all depend on it.

The technology was no longer just about sending personal messages. It was part of the infrastructure behind the internet.

2024: Email providers get stricter about authentication

Sending an email successfully isn't as simple as calling an API and getting a success response.

A message can leave your application but still land in spam. It can also be rejected by the recipient's mail server.

In 2024, Google introduced stricter requirements for senders delivering messages to personal Gmail accounts. Bulk senders sending more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail accounts face additional requirements, including SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication.

The aim is to make it harder for scammers to impersonate legitimate senders and to improve the overall quality of email delivery.

For developers, this is worth paying attention to. If your application relies on email for critical notifications, a properly configured sending domain and good sending practices are part of running the product reliably.

You can read the official requirements in Google's email sender guidelines.

2025–2026: AI starts changing the inbox

Email has another problem now: volume.

Some people have years of conversations sitting in their inboxes. Finding one detail in an old thread can mean scrolling through dozens of replies.

AI is starting to make that easier.

Email services are adding features that can draft replies, improve wording, summarise long conversations, and help users find information using natural-language questions.

Google announced additional AI-powered Gmail features in January 2026, including conversation summaries and ways for eligible users to ask questions about information in their inbox.

Instead of searching for a particular phrase and opening several messages, a user may be able to ask a question in plain English and get a summary of the relevant information.

Of course, AI summaries aren't always perfect. Important dates, financial details, and business decisions should still be checked against the original messages.

Still, the direction is clear: email software is beginning to help people understand their inboxes, not just store messages.

A quick timeline of email history

Is email going anywhere?

We've had instant messaging, social media, workplace chat, and video calls for years. Each has replaced email for certain types of communication.

Yet email is still difficult to replace completely.

It works across organisations, doesn't require both people to be online at the same time, and provides a searchable record of conversations. It's also deeply connected to how online accounts, businesses, and software applications operate.

The inbox itself will probably continue to change. AI may handle more of th