Which came first, email or Windows?
email came first, by 14 years. Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign.
Side by side
| Windows | ||
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1971 | 1985 |
| Date | — | 1985-11-20 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign. | Microsoft shipped Windows 1.0. |
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.
Windows
Windows 1.0 shipped in November 1985, twenty-two months after the Macintosh, and it was not an operating system — it was a graphical shell running on top of MS-DOS, and remained so until Windows NT in 1993 and the consumer transition with Windows XP in 2001. Version 1.0 could not even overlap windows: they tiled, because Apple's legal position on overlapping windows was unresolved.
Common questions
- Which came first, email or Windows?
- email, by 14 years — 1971 against 1985.
- When did email start?
- 1971. Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign.
- When did Windows start?
- 1985. Microsoft shipped Windows 1.0.
Related pages
- Microsoft or Windows? Microsoft
- Apple or email? email
- Apple or Windows? Apple
- the internet (ARPANET) or email? the internet (ARPANET)
- the internet (ARPANET) or Windows? the internet (ARPANET)
- email or Pakistan? Pakistan
- email or India? India
- email or Microsoft? email
- email or the Macintosh? email
- email or the World Wide Web? email
- email or Python? email
- email or Java? email
Sources
- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)