The @ was doing a job.

I really enjoyed Ray Tomlinson’s account of putting network email together in 1971. He needed an address to say which computer a user was on. The @ already meant “at,” so he put it between the name and the host.

The two test machines were sitting beside each other. Once it worked, he emailed the group instructions. The first use of the thing was to tell people the thing existed.

The first message itself? He couldn’t remember. QWERTYUIOP, or something like it, was his guess. I’m glad he left that in.