In ancient times, according to one story, a chain of fires on mountaintops was used to relate the news of the fall of Troy to people in Greece. In the past, native people in the Americas used smoke from fires to transmit message. They developed a code—in which certain combinations of smoke rising had special meanings. For example, two parallel columns of smoke indicated the successful return of a war party.
Almost anything that makes a noise has been used for signaling. Cyrus, an ancient Persian ruler, established lines of signal tower. At each one people with powerful voices shouted message to the next tower, and in this way, new and information was passed on through the kingdom. A kind of drum talk is still used in Central Africa today, although few who are not native have been able to understand it. The sender uses a drum that can produce a high or low tone. Because the local dialect alternates in these tones, the sender is able to simulate speech with the drums.
In modern times, people have communicated by letter, telegraph, and telephone. But no one method has become as widespread as quickly as the use of email. The first email message took place in 1971, and according to its sender, Ray Tomlinson, it was probably the following: “QWERTYUIOP.” What was significant about that? Nothing, really. This is just the row of keys on an English-language keyboard. Tomlinson was just testing out the system and using nonsense message. He had no concept that he was going to start a revolution in communication.
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 scientist could view the message in the mailbox. But there were other computers at other sites where scientists were working on the same project. Tomlinson’s idea was to figure out a way to deliver message to mailboxes on those remote computers He used the @ sign to identify message that were headed out of the local machine to the more distant ones. That was the start of the emailing system that we still use today.
At first, the number of people on email was small, but by the end of the 20th century, there 263 million email boxes. In the 21st century. That figure has grown to over 2 billion. And the function of email services in the future will become more diversified. And text messaging on cell phones is also increasing, so people can, in effect, be in constant touch with people who are long distances away.