Inventor of Email and First User of the @ Sign To Separate Name and Server, Ray Tomlinson, Passes Away

Business Insider via News Republic informs us that The computer legend who invented email has passed away.

Ray Tomlinson put the @ in the "first email address" in Cambridge, Massachusetts and sent the first email to himself as a test. The separation of a person's name from the server via the @ sign permitted email communication between users of different PCs, whereas that was previously not possible. All good things start small.

Tomlinson told a work colleague about his discovery, but asked him not tell anyone about it, because it was not what he was supposed to be working on.

We recall seeing that same phenomenon at Stanford in pioneer digital days, when many new discoveries were made in the course of other work. The first "bitmaps" we saw at SLAC were made during "play" on "company time"....

That was the true nature of invention in the early days of the digital era.

Sasha Cavender at Forbes in "Legends", October 5, 1998, writes about Tomlinson's innovation in detail, noting among other things that:

"Like certain other pioneers of the information age, such as Tim Berners-Lee and Vint Cerf (both profiled in previous Forbes ASAP "Legends"), Tomlinson ... changed the world and made a lot of others rich without cashing in himself. "Innovation is sometimes rewarded," he [had said] with a laugh, "but not this innovation."

Tomlinson was 75.

Hat tip to CaryGEE.

Google Project Tango and Lenovo: 3D Tracking Navigation Gadget Perception & Mapping Will Revolutionize People's Use of Smartphones

A recent headline at The Verge pointed to a smartphone revolution:
Lenovo is making the first consumer phone with Google's Project Tango.

Those who think that the future of smartphones and privacy is being decided in the current Apple-FBI encryption controversy may be missing the real boat.

First of all, governments can not permit the existence of technology which hides evidence forever from law enforcement agencies when people's survival may depend on being able to obtain access to hidden information. We have no doubt that the controversy will be resolved in the interest of society generally.

Secondly, as far as the future of smartphones is concerned, Apple, Inc. has much more to be worried about in the coming advance of technologies such as Google's Project Tango, which will be released in a Lenovo smartphone this summer, implementing new 3D mapping technology for consumers that was already on display in Barcelona in February and which will revolutionize the way that people use smartphones to interact with their world.

See e.g. the YouTube video at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBIjo8Tsn4s.

The Lenovo Project Tango page writes as follows at Coming Summer 2016! The World's First Project Tango-Powered Smartphone:

"Google's Project Tango and Lenovo are partnering to create the world's first smartphone powered by Project Tango technology. The device, which will allow users to experience the world in ways never before possible through a smartphone, will launch in Summer 2016. Watch this space for the latest from Mobile World Congress and beyond on new Project Tango experiences and details on the coming device!"

Project Tango involves the convergence of many new "locational", "navigational", "sonar" and "mapping" technologies -- also such as have just been introduced in consumer drone technology and about which we have been posting. We have not been writing about drones for nothing and perhaps there is more than a subtle connection to our publications about ancient mapping systems, e.g. Sky Earth Native America (see Vol. 1 and Vol. 2) and Stars Stones and Scholars.

It was Giordano Bruno who reportedly stated that "if the world has no beginning or end, then where are we?"

That concern for our location has been a guiding question of humanity from its very inception, and it guides the rationale for much of science and religion, which try to answer the question of "WHERE ARE WE?" Indeed, the common orientation of ancient and modern systems of mapping and navigation is the aim to "help everything and everyone understand where they are".

Project Tango as implemented in smartphones will lead to unprecedented new possibilities.

See the following YouTube videos:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP9m9a2KEN4 
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44vppay5UDc.

Special Postage Stamp of Mosel Wine Country in Germany To Be Issued Starting 7 April 2016: "Moselschleife in Millionenauflage"

The German Post is releasing
a "Mosel Wine Country" postage stamp
starting 7 April, 2016,
showing Traben-Trarbach (Wolf) at the left of the double-stamp
and Kröv at the right,
with a perforation in the middle.
A unique idea!

For the full story, see Weinland Mosel at

Moselschleife in Millionenauflage,
Moselwein e.V.
Gartenfeldstr. 12a
54295 Trier, Germany
Tel. 0651/ 71028-0
Fax 0651/ 71028-20

from which we link the following (here by us size-compressed)
postage stamp image:



See the larger, original image at Weinland Mosel at
Moselschleife in Millionenauflage.

Hat tip to Otmar Hilgert.