The first email — or electronic message as it was called at the time — was sent by computer engineer Ray Tomlinson back in 1971. In celebration of the medium’s 40th birthday, the folks at ReachMail, an email delivery system, put together this infographic that highlights various points of interest in email’s evolution. It covers a lot, from when the word email was first used to references to the medium in popular culture. Infographics are always a bit of a hodgepodge of statistics culled from a variety of sources. Here, we sort through the clutter and pull out some of our favorite facts and figures:
