E-mail inventor: I didn't foresee spam - Times Online

"Thirty-seven years after the first e-mail was sent, its creator says he never imagined it would become a tool for criminals. Ray Tomlinson does not recall the contents of the first e-mail that was ever sent.He thinks it was probably QWERTY, or another meaningless set of letters produced swiping one's hand across the top of the computer keyboard.Whatever it said, at around 7pm one autumn evening in 1971, the first message using Mr Tomlinson's fledgling software, known then as the 'Send Message Program', travelled the short distance of a metre from one computer to a neighbouring machine, and electronic mail was born."

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