Saturday, March 30, 2013

ELECTRONIC MAIL

Electronic Mail
Both Electronic Mail and Instant Messaging were
available as early as 1965. Queen Elizabeth of Britain sent
her first email in 1976.
Users were sharing files - by placing them into common
directories - even earlier (in 1961). The system was
known as CTSS (Compatible Time-Sharing System). It
was modified by Louis Pouzin, Glenda Schroeder, and Pat
Crisman, Tom van Vleck and Noel Morris at the
beginning of 1965 to include a MAIL command. Van
Vleck and Morris also wrote an instant messaging tool
into the software. An unknown hack added a "You've got
mail" alert facility. Other timesharing systems - such as
SDC and BBN - also included e-mail by autumn 1965.
The military deployed AUTODIN (commissioned in
1962) and SAGE with full e-mail capabilities by 1966.
But these were same-machine e-mail applications. They
could not connect different computers. ARPANET, a unit
of the Department of Defence in the United States, was
the first to achieve inter-connectibility.
Ray Tomlinson of ARPANET sent the first recognizable email
message in 1971. It was addressed to himself and
read: "Testing 1-2-3". He then followed with a message to
all ARPANET users with instructions on how to use the
convention username@hostname.
At first, the use of the word "mail" was contentious as the
Postal Office was thought to have a monopoly on sending
personal notes and messages around. But the Postal
Office, not realizing the importance of e-mail, did not
object to the newly coined moniker e-mail.
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