Tomlinson was one of a group of scientists who were working on developing better computer. The scientists at his site were able to send a message to a "mailbox" on the computer on their site. Other scientists could view the message in the mailbox. But there were other computer at other sites where scientists were working on the same project. Tomlinson's idea was to figure out a way headed out of the local machine to the more distant ones. The was the start of the emailing systems that we still use today.