[inforoots] early email

[Dave Crocker]

Stan Sieler wrote:
> Michael writes:
>> I remember back in 65,66 and 68,69, and again in 71 getting messages on
>> Teletype machines that looked exactly like email.
> 
> Most likely mail within the local machine.  We also had similar email in
> 1970 on the Burroughs B6700.


Although it was before my time, my understanding is that there was
single-machine (ie, internal) email as soon as there were shared machines, and
certainly by the time the sharing was simultaneous (time-sharing.)

The first *networked* email was by Ray Tomlinson at BBN on Tenex in 1971. See:

   <http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/firstemailframe.html>

Note that it extended the Tenex single-machine email service, comprising the
sndmsg mail-sending program that appended a new message to a special file in
the recipient's directory, and the readmail program that dumped out recent
messages en masse.

Ray's enhancement used an ad hoc protocol, institutionalized in the File
Transfer Protocol in 1973.

And the reference to Telex in this thread is apt.  When trying to explain 
email to someone, during the 70's, Telex was the closes equivalent one could 
draw on.

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net