Fathers of email and mobile phone win Prince of Asturias award

Fathers of email and mobile phone win Prince of Asturias award
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By m.p. - Jun 17, 2009 - 3:36 PM

Ray Tomlinson and Martin Cooper - www.20minutos.es

The jury said the two U.S. engineers made a decisive contribution to the progress of knowledge

The winners of this year’s Prince of Asturias Prize for Scientific and Technological Investigation have been announced this Wednesday by the jury in Oviedo. Last year’s award went to Google and this year’s has gone to two United States engineers who are regarded as the ‘fathers’ of the mobile phone and email.

They are Martin Cooper, who invented the world’s first handheld mobile phone in 1973, and Raymond Tomlinson, who two years before that, developed the first network electronic mail. He was also the man who put the@ sign in email.

The jury recognised the two men’s ‘decisive contribution to the progress of knowledge’ revolutionising the way in which billions of people communicate across the world. According to information given by El Mundo, 60% of the world’s population now has a mobile phone and one in every five people in the world uses email.

The awards will be presented by the Prince of Asturias in a ceremony to be held in Oviedo this autumn.

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