---
title: "Which came first, email or Windows?"
description: "email vs Windows: email came first, by 14 years — 1971 against 1985. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-windows/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, email or Windows?

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

1971 — 14 years before Windows

email came first, by 14 years. Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign.

## Side by side

|  | email | 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. |

## 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.

## 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?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/microsoft-vs-windows/)
- [Apple or email?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/apple-vs-email/)
- [Apple or Windows?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/apple-vs-windows/)
- [the internet (ARPANET) or email?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/arpanet-vs-email/)
- [the internet (ARPANET) or Windows?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/arpanet-vs-windows/)
- [email or Pakistan?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-pakistan/)
- [email or India?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-india/)
- [email or Microsoft?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-microsoft/)
- [email or the Macintosh?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-macintosh/)
- [email or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-world-wide-web/)
- [email or Python?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-python/)
- [email or Java?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-java/)

## Sources

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