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"The Man Who Made You Put Away Your Pen" [audio 4 min 3 sec]

When was the last time you actually set pen to paper and mailed off a personal letter to someone? It's probably been awhile — and the man to blame is Ray Tomlinson.

Back in 1971, Tomlinson was a young engineer at the Boston firm of Bolt, Beranek and Newman — known today as BBN Technologies. He'd been given a task: Figure out something interesting to do with ARPANET, the newborn computer network that was the predecessor of the modern-day Internet.
Read entire article at NPR All Things Considered