Which came first, Amazon or email?
email came first, by 23 years. Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign.
Side by side
| Amazon | ||
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1994 | 1971 |
| Date | 1994-07-05 | — |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state. | Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign. |
Amazon
Amazon was incorporated on 5 July 1994, originally as Cadabra, and the website opened in July 1995 selling only books. The 1994 incorporation date is used here because it is the company's own founding date; if you mean the shop, 1995 is the answer. Either way it predates Google by three or four years and eBay by about a year.
Messages had been left for other users of the same machine since the mid-1960s. What Tomlinson did in 1971 was send one between two different computers on ARPANET, and pick @ to separate the user from the host because it was the only preposition on the keyboard that could not appear in a name. He did not record the first message and later said it was probably "QWERTYUIOP" or similar. Email is eighteen years older than the Web.
Common questions
- Which came first, Amazon or email?
- email, by 23 years — 1971 against 1994.
- When did Amazon start?
- 1994. Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state.
- When did email start?
- 1971. Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign.
Related pages
- Apple or email? email
- the internet (ARPANET) or email? the internet (ARPANET)
- email or Pakistan? Pakistan
- email or India? India
- email or Microsoft? email
- email or the Macintosh? email
- email or Windows? email
- email or the World Wide Web? email
- email or Python? email
- email or Java? email
- email or JavaScript? email
- email or Netflix? email
Sources
- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)