"As great inventions go, e-mail had a rather ho-hum
beginning back in 1971.
In fact, Ray Tomlinson, the American engineer considered the
``father of e-mail,'' can't quite recall when the first message was
sent, what it said, or even who the recipient was.
``I have no idea what the first one was,'' he told Reuters. ''It
might have been the first line from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
for all I know. The only thing I know was it was all in upper
case.''
Tomlinson, principal engineer at Cambridge, Mass.-based BBN
Technologies, finds himself in the spotlight again after all these
years, having to answer questions about the computer program he
designed as it reaches its 30th birthday in the coming weeks."
