Which came first, email or the iPhone?
email came first, by 36 years. Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign.
Side by side
| the iPhone | ||
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1971 | 2007 |
| Date | — | 2007-06-29 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign. | The first iPhone went on sale after a January announcement. |
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.
the iPhone
Announced on 9 January 2007 and on sale from 29 June, the first iPhone had no app store, no copy and paste, no 3G and no video recording. The App Store arrived over a year later in July 2008. Android Inc. had been founded in 2003, four years before the iPhone, but the first Android phone shipped fifteen months after it.
Common questions
- Which came first, email or the iPhone?
- email, by 36 years — 1971 against 2007.
- When did email start?
- 1971. Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign.
- When did the iPhone start?
- 2007. The first iPhone went on sale after a January announcement.
Related pages
- the Great Pyramid of Giza or the iPhone? the Great Pyramid of Giza
- Apple or email? email
- the internet (ARPANET) or email? the internet (ARPANET)
- the internet (ARPANET) or the iPhone? 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
Sources
- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)