[inforoots] early email

[Michael Hart]

On Sat, 10 May 2008, Dave Crocker wrote:

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> 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.

Definitely not local messages.  These came in on dedicated phone
lines in most cases, but my own TeleType machine, which I still
have in the basement, had a phone dial and could call anywhere,
but was usually on one of the dedicated lines.

You don't have to take my word for it, just ask anyone who worked
in newsrooms, financial houses, military installations, all had a
bank of TeleType machines, and I used to talk on them to the ops
at the other end.

The messages were usually stimple, and if an answer was required
I remember it would end with a "GA" for "Go Ahead". . .in 1965.

I also remember similar machines on film from World War Two.


> 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.

The messages I sent and received in 1971, from what I presumed
was what eventually became the Internet, were definitely coast
to coast, and close enough to the nodes I knew that presumed a
link through those nodes, much as I now presume MRL had links,
probably throught The Center for Advanced Computation.

Thanks for any additional info!!!

Anyone know exactly when the Center got online, what node number?


Michael


>
> d/
> -- 
>
>  Dave Crocker
>  Brandenburg InternetWorking
>  bbiw.net
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