Daily Dooley

Your daily dose of tech trivia!

Question: Before email systems used the @ symbol, how were most electronic messages delivered? *Bonus points if you can name who is credited with choosing the @ symbol and sending the first-ever networked email!

Answer: Stored in shared folders on the same computer!

That is until Ray Tomlinson, a computer engineer working on ARPANET, came along in 1971. He needed a way to separate usernames from hostnames and thought @ "made sense" since it it literally meant “located at" and wasn't used for anything else in usernames.

Fun fact: The very first message wasn’t anything meaningful—it was likely just a string like “QWERTYUIOP”, used to test the system. Tomlinson later admitted he didn’t remember the exact content, as he hadn’t realized at the time he was making history!

Why "Dooley?"

Inspired by the founder's alma mater - Emory University's spirit mascot, Dooley represents the voice of the student body. And when Dooley shows up to your class, you can count on a fun time and the rest of the day off!