[ih] early email standards committees

Jack Haverty jack at 3kitty.org
Mon May 1 14:12:56 PDT 2006


Al Vezza was on the Message Services Committee when I wrote RFC713 in
early 1976, which references:

"...
Vezza, Al, "Message Services Committee Minority Report",
Jan. 1975
..."

Al was my boss at the time at MIT so as PI he was the Committee rep.

I believe that at least part of the motivation for CAHCOM was to broaden the
research to think "outside the box" of traditional (for 1975!) email and 
explore how to use computers to support human communications in a broader sense.
That's how we got into some of the more exploratory areas like using the Datacomputer
as a long-term searchable repository for messages, documents, etc.

I was on CAHCOM along with a bunch of others like Ken Pogran, Don Oestreicher, 
Austin Henderson, etc. (assuming I'm remembering the right committee...).  But I thought
it was earlier than 1977 by a year or so, i.e., not long after that "Minority Report" 
referenced in RFC713.

Sadly I can't find a copy of that report or any other such tidbits.

/Jack



On Mon, 2006-05-01 at 13:05 -0400, Craig Partridge wrote:
> Hi folks:
> 
> RFC 724 refers to a couple of email standards committees:
> 
> * The "Message Service Committee", which apparently existed in
>   the mid-1970s.
> 
> * ARPA's "Committee on Computer-Aided Humand Communication (CAHCOM)",
>   which replaced the Message Service Committee in 1977.
> 
> Anyone know when the Message Service Committee was created and who
> was on it?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Craig
> 
> E-mail: craig at aland.bbn.com or craig at bbn.com
> 




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