I did find the first commercial use of email even though it was not defined with that term.
In 1969 Scientific Time Sharing Corporation STSC used a program called MAILBOX for communication
among the employees and customers.    There is information about that system on pages 501 and
508 of the Delphi Method book which is free on my website.  the book was published in 1975 and the last
chapter covered a bunch of online systems that could be used to help out with a Delphi process on line.
The early message systems of that time period from 1967 on really had all the qualities of what became email
even if the name was not used.    we had people at the medical school in newark on our system beginning in
1975 before "email" was invented at that medical school in newark, EIES was probably the first social network system
and it had a complete message subsystem in addition to conferencing, shared notebooks and a variety of tailored systems
for different user groups.  you can find user manuals at http://library.njit.edu/archives/cccc-materials/index.php

you could sign message or conference comments (all asynchronous or simultanious) with pen names or anonymously so it was
easy to set up Delphi discussions.   each user could take on a unique pen name and choose when writing a message or comment to
use his or her real name, pen name, or anonymity.


On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 10:51 AM, Dag Spicer <dag.spicer@gmail.com> wrote:
Now available from S.A.’s dupes…



… and a special thanks to all of us at SIGCIS … 

 

What also needs to be investigated, by likely an independent professional ethics body, is the biased, unscholarly, and defamatory attacks on Ayyadurai(‘SIGCIS Blog’, 2012),and the clear conflict of interest, as exemplified in the list of individuals in Mr. Haigh’s “Acknowledgements” section thanking those who helped him in denigrating Ayyadurai:

“Acknowledgements: Thanks to the dozens of people who sent me hundreds of messages after learning that I was working on a response for the Post. Many helped to read and shape earlier drafts. In no particular order: Evan Koblentz, Catherine Lathwell, Peter Meyer, Dave Walden, Debbie Deutsch, Marie Hicks, James Sumner, Ken Pogran, Tom Van Vleck, Dag Spicer, Mark Weber, JoAnne Yates, Murray Turoff, Al Kossow, Ramesh Subramanian, David Alan Grier, Paul McJones, Nathan Ensmenger, David Hemmendinger, Jeffrey Yost, David Moran, Peggy Kidwell, Debbie Douglas, Alex Bochannek, Bill McMillan, Len Shustek, Petri Paju, Elizabeth Finler, Dave Crocker, Ray Tomlinson, Pierre Mounier Kuhn, James P.G. Sterbenz, Ben Barker, Jim Cortada, and Craig Partridge.” (‘SIGCIS Blog’, 2012)

A significant cluster or coalition of the individuals listed in the Acknowledge- ments have a direct and indirect, and/or close affiliation to Raytheon/BBN, who claims they “invented email,” as evident on their website (Raytheon/BBN, n.d.), which brandishes the ‘@’ logo with its numerous press and marketing releases claiming that it is the home of the “inventor of email,” Mr. Ray Tomlinson. 






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Distinguished Professor Emeritus
Information Systems, NJIT
homepage: http://is.njit.edu/turoff