[SIGCIS-Members] Who invented email?

[Elizabeth Feinler]

Ray Tomlinson then at Bolt, Beranek and Newman in Boston is usually given credit for inventing email.  However, Dick Watson, then at SRI International in Menlo Park, CA worked on the first email protocols at about the same time.  Doug Engelbart's NLS system had email capabilities in the 70s.

In my opinion the REAL inventor of email was John Vittal, then at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman also.  In the 70s he wrote the program MSG that was widely used and widely copied across the Internet.  It had almost all of the features that email programs have today.  He got sick of maintaining it and it morphed into MM that was jointly maintained by a number of folks at Stanford and SRI.  It was a freebie available to anyone who wanted to install it, and ran first on the DEC 10s and 20s, but was widely copied.

BBN also had a commercial product called Hermes - not sure of timeframe; late 70s early 80s.

Like most programs on the early Internet, many people contributed ideas to enhance the original.

Regards,

Elizabeth Feinler
former PI for the NIC