Internet pioneer was a top Student

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, Daily Gazette, Amsterdam Recorder

Sunday, July 20, 2025

     When computer programmer Raymond Samuel Tomlinson, 74, died in 2016 in Lincoln, Massachusetts, news stories noted his roots in Amsterdam, Vail Mills and Broadalbin.

Tomlinson is credited with sending the first email message between separate computers in 1971 and making the decision to use the ‘at’sign-@-to separate the sender’s name from the sender’s Internet address. He was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame. At his death from a suspected heart attack he was a principal engineer for Raytheon.

Born in Amsterdam on April 23, 1941, Ray was the son of Raymond and Dorothy Tomlinson who lived near the village of Broadalbin in Vail Mills, a hamlet in the town of Mayfield.

According to the Boston Globe, Tomlinson’s father had worked in Amsterdam’s carpet mills then was co-owner of a grocery store on Main Street in Broadalbin. Ray delivered groceries for the store. His mother, the former Dorothy Aspin, worked for a dry cleaner. He had two younger brothers, Gary and David.

“We knew he was smart but had no idea how smart,” said Samuel ‘Tom’ Tomlinson one of Ray’s cousins.

Ray was valedictorian of the class of 1959 at Broadalbin. The class had about forty-five students. Ray was on the golf and soccer teams and played basketball. He was in the senior play, the junior prom committee and the rocket club.

He played trumpet in the high school band and, according to his cousins, he had perfect pitch, the ability to recreate a musical note without hearing a reference tone.

In the class will, he left his “ability to do a six step geometry program in fourteen steps to anyone who has the time and ability to do it.”

‘Tom’ Tomlinson said that he and Ray spent time with Ray’s brother Gary on Great Sacandaga Lake. ‘Tom’ lived in Hagaman but his family had a camp on the lake.

Ray’s girlfriend in high school was Barbara Andersen. Andersen told the Daily Gazette the young man came up with a “concoction of wires and things” that enabled her to talk with him while not interfering with her family’s business phone at the White Holland House restaurant on Route 29.

Ray graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy in 1964. He earned a master’s at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965.

When ‘Tom’ Tomlinson was living in Colorado, Ray came to visit him once. Ray had been sent by his employer to fix a major problem at the computer system at the North American Air Defense Command near Colorado Springs.

Ray was married to Ann Tomlinson of West Palm Beach, Florida. He and his wife had been separated for many years, though not divorced, according to the Boston Globe. They had two daughters, Brooke Tomlinson McKenzie of St. Petersburg, Florida and Suzanne Tomlinson Schaffer of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and two grandchildren.

He leaves a partner of ten years, Karen Seo of Lincoln, Massachusetts. In recent years, Seo and Tomlinson were working together on a project breeding miniature sheep.

Thanks to reader Mike Schuttig for suggesting another visit to Ray Tomlinson’s story.

NOSTALGIA NEIGHBORHOOD 

     Louis “Sam” Hildebrandt died July 1 after a brief illness at Glens Falls hospital.

“Sam” and his father Louis Hildebrandt Sr. were among the founders of the Friends of the Sanford Stud Farm, which has aimed at preserving the Amsterdam farm’s remaining structures.

Louis Sr. had been a thoroughbred jockey for the Sanfords.  “Sam” Hildebrandt’s wit and wisdom will be missed.

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.

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