[ih] first use of "email" (redux)

[Jack Haverty]

Hi Dave,

You're right -- I should have said "early 70s", i.e., the time frame 
(1971 up to maybe 1974?) of the series of RFCs about FTP, which I think 
is before those various mailing lists started.

Also, my experience was from the perspective of MIT, and in particular 
of Licklider's group.  Lick wanted to make sure we didn't constrain our 
thinking to merely replicating the postal system in electronic form.  
Also, because of his ARPA involvement, he may have been more wary of the 
political risks, since our funding, to work on "dynamic modelling" 
(which included the ARPANET work), came from the government.   One can 
imagine some contracting officer holding up a contract pending FCC 
approval....

So, perhaps that avoidance of "electronic mail" I remembered was in just 
a part of that early ARPANET community.  In the 1971-73 or so era, the 
"electronic mail" community was still pretty small until some widely 
accepted standards started to congeal, in particular for the format of 
message headers.   I recall that, from MIT, we had to communicate with 
BBN systems in order to be able to communicate with ARPA people who used 
the timesharing systems at ISI.   But I can't recall what other systems 
were online for mail in the very early 70s -- i.e., hosts who first 
implemented the MAIL and MLFL commands, before there were any kind of 
standardized headers.

When you ran into someone in the hallway, you might have said "Did you 
read your mail yet?", but I don't recall ever hearing "Did you read your 
electronic mail yet?" or "Did you get your email?" Back then, once you 
got "onto the ARPANET", "mail" suddenly became what you got on your 
terminal, not what got dumped in your desk tray.

/Jack

On 06/05/2013 02:18 PM, Dave Crocker wrote:
> On 6/5/2013 9:11 PM, Jack Haverty wrote:
>> All during the 70s, there was a *lot* of discussion about the "network
>> mail" technology, but I can believe that the term "email" didn't arise
>> until later.  The term "electronic mail" would of course have to arise
>> before the contraction to "email".   But there were legal and political
>> issues that, IMHO, forced the use of "ARPANET mail", or "network mail"
>> during that period.
>>
>> "Electronic mail" was a forbidden term, in the ARPANET community. Here's
>> why...
>
>
> Jack,
>
> Interesting bit of history.  Perhaps some formal ARPA documents had a 
> prohibition, but the community did not.
>
> We used the terms "mail", "network mail" and "electronic mail" pretty 
> regularly and clearly pretty casually.  Certainly these terms are 
> scattered throughout the earliest mailing lists:  First, Msggroup, 
> which discussed use and directions for email, and then Header-People, 
> which discussed email technology.
>
> What does /not/ appear in the archives for either in the 70s are the 
> terms "e-mail" or "email".  Sigh.
>
> Some quick bits of research, without trying to be all that diligent, 
> but to show how broadly the term 'electronic mail' was indeed used 
> amongst the Arpanet community:
>
>
> MsgGroup:
>
>> Date:  8 JUN 1975 1629-PDT
>> From: DCROCKER at USC-ISI
>> Subject: MSGGROUP# 004 Use of a Teleconferencing system, in place of 
>> Net Mail
>> To:   MessageGroup:
>>
>> I have spent the better part of this past spring looking at our
>> teleconferencing capabilities (part of a seminar at ISI) and, as a
>> result, suggest we continue to use Network mail as our communications
>> tool, rather than using TCTALK or FORUM.
> ...
>> Use of Net Mail a) is extrememly convenient for most, if not all, of
>> us, since we already exercise it for other activities; b) allows
>> passive observation of the dialogue, rather than forcing
>> everyone to explicitly catch up on recent comments (5 of us
>> recently blew off any casual observers to our seminar by doubling
>> the size of our online transcript, in the space of 10 days.
>
>
> and
>
>
>> Date: 5 JAN 76 1353-PST
>> From: Geoff at SRI-AI
>> Subject: MSGGROUP# 248 ARPAnet mail the coming thing?
>> Action-to: [ISI]<MsgGroup>Mailing.List:
>> Message-Id: <[FAKE]-19-((76 1 7) (22 32 8) "PST").STEFFERUD>
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>>    I was reading the news via SU-AI's New York Times and AP news wire 
>> system
>> last night, when I came accross an artical on how the post office is
>> worried that they might get ripped off if everyone goes the ARPAnet mail
>> route in the future; so Stef and I thought it might spark some 
>> conversation
>> if I sent the artical around to you all.
>>
>>     [Geoff]
>>
>> <<<<<<----->>>>>>
>>
>> a018  2304  04 Jan 76
>> Electronic Mail Bjt 490, 2 takes 610
>> By JEFFREY MILLS
>> Associated Press Writer
>>     WASHINGTON (AP) - The Postal Service is beginning to worry about
>> competition from electronic communication systems which threaten to
>> make mailmen obsolete.
> ...
>>     Describing the technological change facing the service, Ellington
>> said, ''The majority of business mail already is generated by computer
>> - computerized invoices, computerized addresses or what have you.
>> Once you have a relationship like that, you have to ask why not just
>> send the message from one computer to another without the middleman.''
>>     The message industry envisions a receiver in everyone's home to
>> receive messages 24 hours a day. A customer upon awakening would find
>> all of his ''mail'' in a tray waiting for him. The technology for
>> such systems may already exist in microwaves and satellite channels.
>
>
> and
>
>
>> Date: 20 JAN 76 1406-PST
>> From: STEFFERUD at USC-ISI
>> Subject: MSGGROUP# 271 Situation as of 20 JAN 1976
>> Action-to: [ISI]<MsgGroup>Mailing.List:
>> Message-Id: <[FAKE]-2-((76 1 20) (14 53 48) "PST").STEFFERUD>
>>
>> Per Steve Walker's request that I assemble the votes on
>> "primitive" or "core" or "basic" commands, I have reviewed the
>> message traffic on the subject and find that we have constructed a
>> nicely complex problem space to get lost in.  To sort out the
>> issues, I want to send a set of separate messages to explain where
>> we seem to be at and to frame the "ballot" so you can vote.  If
>> possible, I would like to display my perception of the latent
>> consensus position of the group so you can react to the more
>> important issues without beating dead horses.
>>
>> My first comments focus on the question:  "What are we trying to
>> do?"
>>
>> Answer:  We are trying to proceed in an evolutionary way to a
>> rich, ppowerful, consistent, comprehensible, forgiving,
>> implementable set of message systems that will cater to the many
>> various needs of a wide range of potential future users of ARPANET
>> Electronic Mail Systems.
>
>
> and
>
>
>> From: RYLAND at RUTGERS-10
>> Subject: MSGGROUP# 277 Building Comfortable Message Systems, I
>> Action-to: msggroup at USC-ISI
>> Message-Id: <[FAKE]-5-((76 2 6) (12 32 11) "PST").STEFFERUD>
>>
>> Building Comfortable Message Systems, I
>>
>>      Before we vote on the basic set of standard message system
>> commands and objects, I would like to make explicit an assumption
>> that has appeared a number of times in the message group
>> dialogue:  to build comfortable, usable message systems, we must
>> keep the user as much in his normal, everyday world as possible.
>> In otherwords, we need to build systems which interact with a
>> user in "real world" terms, insofar as thisis possible in the new
>> context of electronic mail systems.
>
>
> and
>
>
>> Date: 17 Feb 1977 at 0922-PST
>> Subject: MSGGROUP# 461  INTRODUCTION from Stock Gaines at RAND-UNIX
>> Subject: Re: MSGGROUP# 460 Request for Voluntary Introductions
>> From: Gaines at Rand-Unix
>> To: MsgGroup at Usc-Isi
>> Message-ID: <[Rand-Unix]17-Feb-77 09:22:18.Gaines>
>> In-Reply-To: Your Message of 16 FEB 1977 2217-PST
>> In-Reply-To: <[USC-ISI]16-FEB-77 22:17:42.STEFFERUD>
>>
>> I am a member of the Information Sciences Dept. at Rand.  I am a recent
>> convert to the use of mail systems.  I am interested in the evolution
>> of ideas about electronic mail, and more generally in communications
>> via computer as a major aspect of new interactive uses of computers.
>> I am also interested in the system questions which arise here, such
>> as process structuring questions, file and directory system questions,
>> etc.
>
>
>
> Header-People:
>
>> Date:     25 May 1977 1131-EDT
>> From:     Brian Reid at CMU-10A
>> Subject:  RFC724 and non-ARPA networks
>> To:       Pogran at MIT-Multics, MsgGroup at ISI, Header-People at 
>> MIT-MC
>> CC:       Reid at CMU-10A
>> Sender:   BRIAN.REID at CMU-10A
>> Message-ID: [CMU-10A] 25 May 1977 11:31:18 Brian Reid
>> In-Reply-To: RFC724
>>
>> Even while the packets are buzzing with news about other soon-to-be
>> networks, and even though many of us are passionately committed to
>> both personal computing and electronic mail, I don't see any mention
>> in RFC724 that there might possibly be other networks with which we
>> would like to interface.
>
> and
>
>> Date: 6 Jul 1977 1134-PDT
>> Sender: GEOFF at SRI-KA
>> Subject: Re:  Re: headers
>> From: GEOFF at SRI-KA
>> To: BRIAN.REID at CMU-10A
>> Cc: Frankston at MIT-MULTICS, ktp at MIT-MULTICS,
>> Cc: crd at MIT-MULTICS, dmw at MIT-MULTICS, pg at MIT-MULTICS,
>> Cc: header-people at MIT-MC
>> Message-ID: <[SRI-KA] 6-Jul-77 11:34:34.GEOFF>
>> In-Reply-To: [CMU-10A]  6 Jul 1977 11:25:37 Brian Reid
>>
>> I think you are being a bit wise and K foolish or whatever the
>> transmorgrified expression ought to be.
>>
>> When you look at systems like ISI, BBN, SRI-KA, etc, where the
>> MAJORITY of the entire system is for the express purpose of
>> people mananging their electronic mail over the ARPANET, then you
>> know how expensive it really is.  When you recieve and send 30 to
>> 70 messages a day average, then what you 'consider' free is
>> rather expensive.  Not all systems have unlimited disk space you
>> know.  And it is not true at all about time to process a mail
>> header is free - maybe that is so on a KL-10, when when you are
>> on a KA you can darn well feel it when the loag avg is roaring.
>
>
>