--- title: "Which came first, email or the World Wide Web?" description: "email vs the World Wide Web: email came first, by 18 years — 1971 against 1989. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently." url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-world-wide-web/ site: "At One Place" --- # Which came first, email or the World Wide Web? **Which came first, email or the World Wide Web?: email** 1971 — 18 years before the World Wide Web email came first, by 18 years. Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign. ## Side by side | | email | the World Wide Web | | --- | --- | --- | | Year | 1971 | 1989 | | Category | technology | technology | | What happened | Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign. | Tim Berners-Lee wrote the proposal at CERN. | ## 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. ## the World Wide Web Berners-Lee circulated his proposal in March 1989, built the first browser and server by the end of 1990, and CERN put the software into the public domain in 1993. The Web is twenty years younger than the internet: the internet is the network, the Web is one service running on it, and email and file transfer both predate the Web by decades. The first website went live in December 1990 and is still online. ## Common questions ### Which came first, email or the World Wide Web? email, by 18 years — 1971 against 1989. ### When did email start? 1971. Ray Tomlinson sent the first message between two computers and chose the @ sign. ### When did the World Wide Web start? 1989. Tim Berners-Lee wrote the proposal at CERN. ## Related pages - [Microsoft or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/microsoft-vs-world-wide-web/) - [Apple or email?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/apple-vs-email/) - [Apple or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/apple-vs-world-wide-web/) - [the internet (ARPANET) or email?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/arpanet-vs-email/) - [the internet (ARPANET) or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/arpanet-vs-world-wide-web/) - [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 Windows?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-windows/) - [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]