[ih] MAP & BBN

[Craig Partridge]

> Depends what you mean by 'Networked' and 'Invented' !
> 
> As an aside, I am surprised that no one has staked a prior claim for IBM
> 360's, but perhaps either the prevalence of ad hoc virtual reader / virtual
> punch "mail" didn't immediately appear with CP68, or they weren't
> sufficiently connected early enough?
> 
> If Email is the iconic '@', that is Tomlinson's, uncontested it seems. He
> claimed the @ sign for it, elegantly mnemonic, an inspired choice.  (But to
> the great frustration of all those whose LINEKILL it was !)  His
> SNDMSG donated the ubiquitous @ copula to posterity, so SNDMSG is rightly
> historic.
> 
> Tomlinson apparently indeed implemented inter-machine over-ARPA-net e-mail
> first (even though it was within a single building) . But it was still
> vendor specific (TENEX only), it was not usable by ARPANET hosts of other
> brands.
> 
> However, the need for a general all-ARPANET vendor-neutral netmail was
> conceived first, and was implemented shortly after.
> 
> If one omits multi-host, Tom van Vleck and Noel Morris on CTSS have
> precedence on email over all, it seems.
> 
> If invention is an act of intellect separate from construction, van Vleck,
> Licklider and R. W. Watson claim precedence for conception of
> interoperable, networked email.

Having looked at the historical record in some depth and done a bunch of
interview for an article in IEEE Annals a few years ago (copy on my
web page for anyone who wants), I think this is a misreading.

Yes, single system email predated SNDMSG.  Indeed, the standalone version
of SNDMSG that Ray enhanced to do network email was itself a port to TENEX
from another system. (Ray no longer remembers which one and I couldn't find
the original system).  Tom and Noel's claim to be first on CTSS is the best
I've seen.

But for networked email, I found no evidence that Lick or Dick Watson devised
the idea.  Dick did propose an idea for printing memos on remote printers
that could then be delivered by the remote office's internal interoffice
mail system.  But that's not networked email.  Indeed, it was Dick's RFC 196
on this topic that struck Ray as the wrong idea and drove Ray to create
networked email in response.

Thanks!

Craig
http://www.ir.bbn.com/~craig