Talk:Ray Tomlinson

His Personal Life

Now that Ray has sadly passed away, the world will be interested in his personal & professional life in somewhat more depth. The existing WIKI-BIO is a bit short on salient details which would enrich this modern day hero's online profile. After all, he was a major figure, having significantly transformed humanity.

Untitled

The part about the first message ever seems to contradict what is said under "Origins of e-mail" in the E-mail article. Fabrício Kury

As Tomlinson wrote, he added code from SNDMSG to CPYNET. The article stated the reverse so I have changed it.

Shiva Ayyadurai

An individual by the name of Shiva Ayyadurai has been attempting to inject himself into the news of Ray Tomlinson's death by claiming he is the rightful inventor of "email" and that Tomlinson is being undeservedly credited for it. He did technically create a program called "EMAIL" about 10 years or so after Tomlinson's email invention. I'm putting this out there because I just reverted a change to this article that included an irrelevant link to Ayyadurai's wikipedia article (no commentary or context, just a link was provided). At this point I will just let the community decide what relevance, if any, he has to this article and if he should be continued to be allowed to try to inject himself in this manner. Dmdx86 (talk) 16:18, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

History of Concept

Let us not forget J. C. R. Licklider. He created the concept in the early 1960s, according to my book. And it took great technicians to make it work, which is an old story. RIP — Preceding unsigned comment added by PointyHairedEE (talk • contribs) 17:33, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

The @ sign perhaps wasn't his most important innovation

The following personal recollection obviously isn't proper documentable information for Wikipedia, but I feel it must be recorded somewhere -- i.e. this talk page -- lest it be lost.

Summers 1964-6 I was a local high school student who used the RLE PDP-1 timesharing system (2-fl, bldg 26, MIT) and thereafter undergraduate, staff, lecturer, and staff of the Media Lab. i used the PDP-1 during this period, and was at its retirement ceremony (perhaps 1977?). I'm unsure of the dates, but during the early years of this period (pre ARPANet) Ray, apparently a grad student, was also a frequent user of this machine. He wasn't an especially outgoing person -- at least not to an insignificant high-school or undergraduate student -- even though we spent long periods in the same room I don't remember any substantive conversation with him beyond what was necessary when sharing the same time-sharing machine. I certainly can't claim him as a friend or associate. The user community watched Ray develop something which today is far more important than (@non-local-host) email. He wrote a program called "maze". The PDP-1 was a 5-msec-cycle-time machine with a 512x512 point-plotting display. 50usec per point. Many groundbreaking graphics development were performed on this hardware -- including the original spacewar. Ray's maze displayed a realistic maze, such as was commonly user in rodent maze-learning experiments, with a inside view. Two 360 degree pots on the machine controlled speed and direction (or more difficultly, rotational speed, the first derivative of direction). The task for the human was to learn and solve a maze, a task for which us large-brained mammals seem much less evolved than rodents. The limited hardware meant that each edge segment of the maze could be displayed using only a few points. Yet the real-time, 2D-projection perspective display worked as one navigated the maze. It occurs to me that maze was (one of) the earliest 3d 1st-person navigation simulations,the earliest of which I am aware. If so,it was the progenitor of such software, including modern VR applications. Perhaps that was more important than the @ sign?

Wolfamade (talk) Steve Haflich, shaflich@gmail.com

Subject/headline The @ sign perhaps wasn't his most important innovation Subject preview: (→‎The @ sign perhaps wasn't his most important innovation: new section)