[ih] propagation of early email?

[Dave Crocker]

In line with most of the responses you've already gotten:

BBN's Tenex was the preferred computer science computing platform. 
Anything written on one was therefore readily available to the rest of 
the community.

Ray modified SNDMSG to use CPYNET, adding the @-based string to refer to 
the remote host.  I believe CPYNET was indeed Tenex-specific.  Mail 
reading was done with READMAIL that dumped out all 'recent' message, 
received since the last running of READMAIL.

Ray's work was in reaction to email protocol discussions that had 
already started for something more elaborate with rather less 
integration (targeting printing out rather than online reading.)

I had repeatedly heard the anecdote of Abhay's adding the MAIL and MLFL 
commands to FTP.  But some years ago, Abhay denied it, saying that email 
was "always" part of the FTP discussion.  Certainly the documentation 
suggests a long consideration of the capability.

On the other hand, Craig's recounting is specific to MLFL, rather than 
including MAIL, and I didn't ask Abhay anything that specific.

Anonymous FTP was quite separate from email, in a push vs. pull 
distinction.  I characterize anonymous FTP as the beginning of the web, 
since it was how public documents were published and made readily 
accessible.

For reference, there is now a web site for discussing the origins of 
email, to develop a consensus view of the details:

    emailhistory.org

Note that a timeline is under development, seeking feedback, corrections 
and additions.

Folks are encouraged to join in the discussions.

d/
On 5/22/2012 7:17 AM, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> So... harkening back to the recent discussions on the "invention of
> email".....

-- 
  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net