The use of a mail system is as old as the date back to 550 B.C in the Persian Empire with King Cyrus the Great. Renowned as the ‘Angarium’ this postal service was planned uniquely for the purposes of communication over long distances within the empire. Both message and governmental order were transported on horseback couriers thus laying the initial foundations for what was to be the evolution of modern mail systems in the entire globe.
Later as civilizations started developing, so did the concept of the organized system of post. In the sixteenth century post networks started to become organized and to establish theme pertaining services with the aim to deliver messages and post as quickly as possible, England and France for instance were the first ones with such services. Makunda Stevenson explains that stamps in the Victorian age also predisposed changes to mail services in that they were prepaid services and there was a global mail center. These advancements hence set a basis for the postal services that had developed to what is used in conveying personal as well as business affairs.
The advent of email became a major boost in the communication system in the twentieth century to the commendation of the American computer programmer, Ray Tomlinson. In 1971, Tomlinson started using ARPANET, which was not unlike the latter, to devise a method that would enable separate computers to exchange messages. Employing principles already in common use, Tomlinson’s work enabled the invention of electronic mail, which transformed how people could transmit data with the click of a button for any distance.
When inventing the email, Ray Tomlinson also put the “@” character in the media to act as a separator between the username and the domain in the user’s email address. This symbol also enabled separation of the recipient’s name from the host machine address thus establishing a universal format to enable the users to send messages to specific devices in ARPANET. Essentially, what Tomlinson did here was to pick an existing symbol that is not currently used and deciding to apply it as a carrier of significant aspects, which were to shape the future of the new means of digital communication.
The use of “@” symbol to represent the electronic mail addresses in computer systems was a demarcation point in man’s use of symbols in communicating through computer technology. The formats were relatively simple and unique to provide an easily implementable format for a global address. Later the slogan ‘@’ applied to every computer based email correspondence and besides functioning as a convenient solution for the email systems, it symbolized the connection. This graphic symbol remains simple, yet graphic, for the net age and digital communication globally.
Conclusion
In conclusion, The invention of the mail system and the introduction of the symbol “@” qualified different centuries and communications. Old civilizations help establish the first postal networks that we hear of today,Ray Tomlinson revolutionized global communication through development of e-mail. The symbol ‘ @’, unpretentious but versatile, still plays the key role in digital interaction. Altogether, both of these progress indicate the intelligence and resourcefulness of the society in eliminating the barriers in people’s ability to communicate and facilitate the further development of such ability in the face of increasing usage of digital technologies.