Forgotten Internet: The Story of Email
It is a common occurrence in old movies: Our hero checks in at a hotel in some exotic locale, and the desk clerk says, “Ah, Mr. Barker, there’s a letter for you.” Or maybe a telegram. Either way, since humans learned to write, they’ve been obsessed with getting their writing in the hands of someone else. Back when we were wondering what people would do if they had a computer in their homes, most of us never guessed it would be: write to each other. Yet that turned out to be the killer app, or, at least, one of them.
What’s interesting about the hotel mail was that you had to plan ahead and know when your recipient would be there. Otherwise, you had to send your note to their home address, and it would have to wait. Telegrams were a little better because they were fast, but you still had to know where to send the message.
Early Days
In addition to visiting a telegraph office, or post office, to send a note somewhere, commercial users started wanting something better at the early part of the twentieth century. This led to dedicated teletype lines. By 1933, though, a network of Teletype machines — Telex — arose. Before the Internet, it was very common for a company to advertise its Telex number — or TWX number, a competing network from the phone company and, later, Western Union — if they dealt with business accounts.
Fax machines came later, and the hardware was cheap enough that the average person was slightly more likely to have a fax machine or the use of one than a Telex.
Computers
It is hard to remember, but through much of this time, you were probably more likely to have access to a fax machine than a computer that was connected to anyone outside of your immediate office. In 1962, MIT’s Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) had a way for users to share files, and, of course, they did. By 1962, the IBM 1440 could send messages from terminal to terminal. Not really email, but it was a start.
People sharing files on CTSS led to a MAIL command by 1965. Each user had a local file called, in a fit of originality, MAIL BOX. Anyone could append messages to the file, but only the owner could read or edit it. Other early systems got the idea quickly.
By 1971, ARPANET — the granddaddy of the Internet — got SNDMSG to handle mail between networked computers. It could also transfer files. Each address had a local part and a remote hostname. In between? The “@” sign. The first message went between two PDP-10 machines that were in sight of each other. The developer, Ray Tomlinson, is often credited with inventing modern email. He would continue to drive mail innovation as part of the International Network Working Group.
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Tomlinson’s program caused an explosion of similar mail programs. Unix had one. IBM was developing what would eventually become its office suite for mainframe computers. The University of Illinois had PLATO IV, which offered, among other things, mail.
The Rest of the World
In 1978, CompuServe started offering mail, primarily aimed at commercial customers. In the next year, they’d launch MicroNET, allowing people to dial into a computer to, among other things, send and receive mail.
By 1981, Compuserve rebranded its mail service as EMAIL, although it probably wasn’t the first to coin that term. That same year, IBM rolled out its internal system to the rest of the world. PROFS was widely used in the business world, and it wasn’t uncommon to hear people say they “sent you a PROFS.”
The biggest differentiator, of course, was if you could send mail to other people using your (presumably big) computer, other people on your network, or anywhere. There were plenty of schemes to get local mail off the local machine, like UUCP, for example.
The 1980s saw an explosion of LANs that had their own servers, and these usually offered, at least, local mail services. Of course, you could also buy software from Microsoft, Lotus, or others to provide mail.
The Internet
Back then, normal people didn’t have access to the Internet. That’s how companies like CompuServe, and their main competitor The Source, managed to entice people to sign up for services. They would often have gateways to other mail systems and, eventually, the Internet, too. But 1985 would see the formation of Quantum Link. Never heard of them? Maybe you’ll remember in 1989 when they changed their name to America Online and, later, AOL.
For whatever reason, AOL took over that market. By 1995, AOL had around three million active users, and its signature “You’ve got mail!” audio clip, voiced by the late Elwood Edwards, was a cultural icon. In addition to email, it pioneered instant messaging and flooded the market with free trial disks.
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Of course, people started getting access to the actual Internet, so all the specialized mail providers suffered.
Milestones
The first head of state to send an email? Queen Elizabeth II, back in 1976. Jimmy Carter was the first known presidential candidate to use email in 1976. Astronauts on the Space Shuttle (STS-43 in 1991) were the first to send email from space. It was pretty complicated, as Scott Manley discusses in the video below.
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Less inspiring, Gary Thuerk sent the first spam message over ARPANET in 1978. The topic? A new product for DEC.
Modern Mail
Modern mail primarily relies on SMTP, IMAP, and, sometimes POP. Surprisingly, these protocols date back to the early 1980s, but were mostly part of the ARPANET until the Internet opened up.
Of course, the protocols have changed with time. E-mail needed to adapt to TCP/IP and DNS. Today, the protocols have provisions for validating senders to help stop spam, as well as to encrypt messages. But at the core, the technology that moves mail around the Internet is mostly unchanged. The nice thing: you can send to someone without knowing where they’ll be and when they’ll be there. Mr. Barker doesn’t have to get a packet from the front desk anymore.