---
title: "Which came first, email or Mario?"
description: "email vs Mario: email came first, by 10 years — 1971 against 1981. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-super-mario/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, email or Mario?

**Which came first, email or Mario?: email**

1971 — 10 years before Mario

email came first, by 10 years. Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign.

## Side by side

|  | email | Mario |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1971 | 1981 |
| Category | technology | media |
| What happened | Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign. | Mario debuted as "Jumpman" in the arcade game Donkey Kong. |

## email

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.

## Mario

Mario first appeared in Donkey Kong in 1981, credited as Jumpman, four years before Super Mario Bros. of 1985 made him a household name. He wears a cap because animating hair at that resolution was impossible, and dungarees because they made his arm movements legible against his body — the design is entirely a consequence of an 16×16 pixel sprite.

## Common questions

### Which came first, email or Mario?

email, by 10 years — 1971 against 1981.

### When did email start?

1971. Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign.

### When did Mario start?

1981. Mario debuted as "Jumpman" in the arcade game Donkey Kong.

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- [email or Python?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-python/)

## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]