Email

Email is a way of sending written messages from one computer to another over the internet. The word is short for "electronic mail." An email can travel from a phone in New York to a laptop in Tokyo in just a few seconds. People use email to share notes, photos, schoolwork, and files of almost any kind.

Every email has an address. An address looks like this: name@example.com. The first part is the user's name. The second part, after the @ symbol, is the name of the company or service that holds the user's mailbox. The @ symbol means "at," so the address is read as "name at example dot com."

A man named Ray Tomlinson sent the first true email in 1971. He was working on an early version of the internet called ARPANET. He needed a way to tell the computer which user the message belonged to and which machine to send it to. He looked at his keyboard and picked the @ key. It was rare, and no one used it in their name, so it would not get mixed up. Every email address in the world still uses that symbol today.

Email travels through the internet in small pieces. When you hit "send," your message is broken into chunks called packets. The packets zip through cables and wireless signals to a mail server. A mail server is a powerful computer whose only job is to hold and pass along email. The server then delivers the message to the receiver's inbox, where it waits to be opened.

Email changed the world in many ways. Before email, sending a letter across the ocean took weeks. A business letter from London to Sydney once had to travel by ship. Now the same message arrives almost instantly. Workers, scientists, and families can stay in touch across any distance for almost no cost.

Email has problems too. Spam is junk email sent to millions of people at once, usually trying to sell something or trick the reader. Some emails carry viruses or scams that try to steal passwords. This kind of trick is called phishing. Most email services now use filters that catch spam before a person sees it.

Today, billions of emails are sent every day. Even with newer apps for chatting and video, email is still the main way that schools, jobs, and governments send official messages.