[SIGCIS-Members] Email History -- unresolved questions

[Thomas Haigh]

Hello everyone,

 

Thanks for all the messages that keep flooding in. To avoid duplication and
wasted effort, I'm trying to be clearer on what specific topics we're
currently in need of hard evidence on.

 

One thing we do know about: the relevant RFCs (354, 385, 524, 561, 733,
etc). Between these, Craig Partidge's very thorough article and some
personal communications from participants such as Ken Pogran I'm confident
that we know what we need for this short article about ARPANET email and its
evolution.

 

Unresolved questions:

 

.         "Electronic mail," as a phrase I have usage of Business Week going
back to 1975. Am interested in earlier usage, particularly in publications
aimed at business or the general public.

 

.         "email" or "e-mail" as a word. A Google Groups (formerly Deja
News) archive of a May 1981 post suggests that the Compuserve email program
might have been called EMAIL. It's clear from a news story that Compuserve
had electronic mail in 1980. (Compuserve began in 1969 as a timesharing
service provider and only later morphed to a personal computer oriented
online service). Does anyone have documentation or other sources to confirm
when it first offered email and what its command was called?

 

.         How about other commercial timesharing services, such as TYMSHARE
or COMSHARE? I assume they had electronic mail by some point in the early-
to mid-1970s but have no evidence as yet. (We do know that APL offered its
users an early and robust email system by about 1972). These systems might
have offered the first way for an individual to buy email access (though of
course there were no gateways between services in the 1970s).

 

.         We know about CTSS email and the materials at multicians.org, and
I'm in touch with Tom Van Vleck. As far as I know nobody has challenged its
1965 claim to be the first mail system on a computer. Are they any other
serious claimants?

 

.         How about other early timesharing systems, e.g. Michigan. There
were some articles in Annals on Michigan timesharing I should pull up. Do we
know when these got mail?

 

.         Email attachments - anyone know when these emerged as a standard
feature? I suspect maybe on office automation style email systems before
Internet email, as I remember in the early 1990s having to UUENCODE things
and send them in the message body for manual decoding using SUN UNIX. Can't
imagine office workers putting up with that.

 

.         XEROX PARC email for the Alto. Probably a milestone in terms of
GUI client. Best source I know on its "Laurel" software is Butler Lampsons
chapter in History of Personal Workstations. That includes a 1981
screenshot. Anyone know of any descriptions or publications prior to that
date, or in more detail. Also when did it became operational?

 

Thanks,


Tom

 

 

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