[inforoots] Networked EMail

[Elizabeth Feinler]

FYI Below is a message I sent to Dr. Vinton Cerf together with his  
reply with regard to the developers of email on the Arpanet that might  
be of interest to your Inforoots discussion of same.  At the time I  
was nominating Dick Watson, formerly of Doug Engelbart's group at SRI,  
for an IEEE award as an early developer of email. Jerry Burchfiel of  
BBN was nominating Ray Tomlinson.   I believe that Ray Tomlinson  
eventually received the award.  This message indicates who some of the  
early contributors were.   If any of you are interested we have a  
cabinet full of reprints covering many aspects of the early  
development of electronic mail.

Regards,

Jake Feinler

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Jake Feinler <feinler at earthlink.net>
> Date: September 23, 2002 11:58:15 AM PDT
> To: "vinton g. cerf" <vinton.g.cerf at wcom.com>, Jerry Burchfiel <burchfiel at bbn.com 
> >
> Cc: Jake Feinler <feinler at earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: Nominations for IEEE Internet Award for Networked EMail
>
> Vint,
>
> I would think that all of these candidates should be nominated - but  
> for different things.  It seems to me that:
>
> Ray Tomlinson was the first to develop email and his system worked   
> on multiple hosts but on one platform type and operating system, as  
> I understand it. (I am least familiar with his work, so correct me  
> if this is not true.)

The platform was a DEC-10 running the TENEX operating system which was  
prevalent across the Arpanet.
>
>
> Dick Watson campaigned to make email a part of the protocol suite so  
> that it could be standardized and  implemented on multiple hosts  
> with heterogeneous operating systems.

Engelbart's NLS system supported a form of email.  Dick worked for  
Doug (SRI) at the time he did this work.
>
>
> Dave Crocker came later with mmdf and did much to enrich the  
> protocol and contribute to the definition of the protocol as a  
> standalone protocol of its own in the TCP/IP protocol suite and  
> facilitated making email compatible across multiple networks.
>
> Others that come to mind are:
>
>    Jim White (SRI) - led  the effort to take the TCP/IP mail  
> protocol to an international standard
>    Ken Harrenstien (MIT and SRI) and Brian Harvey (Stanford) - for  
> their work on Comsys that allowed one to bundle network
>                mail transmission and unbundle at the site  (I think  
> I have this right) and Ken for his work
>                in taking email to the deaf community via Deafnet
>    Ron Uhlig (Army) - led the effort to get the Army to adopt  
> email.  Without this official adoption of its use,
>                     it might never have taken off as it did, in my  
> opinion.
>
Also Einar Stefferud (consultant to the Army)
>
>    John Vittal (BBN) - who wrote the most popular email program ever  
> written and which has been the model
>                    for almost every email system since.

Note:  John left BBN to join USC-ISI and is reputed to have accepted  
the position on the condition that he never have to program his email  
program again.  I don't know where John  is now, but he should know  
the history of email if anyone does.
>
>
> For IEEE to have only one Internet Award per year, seems  
> prohibitive.  There are so many people that deserve recognition for  
> this incredible technology, not least of which is yourself.  I was  
> amazed at how few people have been recognized so far.  Perhaps IEEE  
> would like to reconsider how this award is made and for what.
>
> That's my 2 cents worth, and I agree with you that the process is  
> not very fair the way it is set up.
>
> Jake
> -- 
> Jake Feinler <feinler at earthlink.net>
>
>>
>> From: "vinton g. cerf" <vinton.g.cerf at wcom.com>
>> Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2002 17:30:06 -0400
>> To: Jerry Burchfiel <burchfiel at bbn.com>, Jake Feinler <feinler at earthlink.net 
>> >
>> Subject: Re: Nominations for IEEE Internet Award for Networked EMail
>>
>
>> Jerry, Jake,
>>
>> you have both proposed different candidates for recognition by IEEE  
>> for work on electronic mail. Jerry has proposed Ray Tomlinson and  
>> Jake has proposed Dick Watson. Reading over the RFCs, it looked to  
>> me as if Dick was proposing something closer to file transfer since  
>> he wanted a "mailbox" that would default to a printer queue or to  
>> numbered boxes where files would accumulate. Indeed Abhay Bhushan  
>> at MIT seemed to be interacting with Dick Watson among others  
>> mostly focused on file transfers. Ray Tomlinson was more focused on  
>> personal email. And if one is going to mention email specifically,  
>> it would be hard to leave out Dave Crocker whose name is all over  
>> the key RFCs (733, 821, 822, etc). Of course, Larry Roberts wrote  
>> on the first clients with his "RDMAIL" TECO macros. So this is a  
>> hard one to sort out fairly. Of the people I mention, how would you  
>> rank order them and are their others that would also fall into this  
>> early mail list?
>>
>> vint
>>
>>
>>
>> Vint Cerf
>> SVP Architecture & Technology
>> WorldCom
>> 22001 Loudoun County Parkway, F2-4115
>> Ashburn, VA 20147
>> 703 886 1690 (v806 1690)
>> 703 886 0047 fax
>>
>

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