[ih] "email"-- an opportunity.

[John Day]

It is highly likely that "email" or "e-mail" occurred in email or 
other informal communication long before it appeared in print.  The 
problem is that with electronic media of the time, i.e. having 
equipment that would still read it, we may well have lost those 
occurrences.

At 11:20 PM -0400 6/5/13, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>Jack Haverty wrote:
>>
>>I suspect there's some fascinating history of electronic mail 
>>involving that E-COM proposal and why it never happened. Sounds 
>>like another case where the experimental system trounced the 
>>official one......later repeated by TCP, etc., etc.
>>
>>But I can't find anywhere either where they call it email. But I 
>>agree with Noel -- I think the term "email" came from outside our 
>>community. I vaguely recall first seeing it in something like a 
>>trade magazine or newspaper article.
>>
>
>The OECD "appeal" included this:
>
>----------------
>The /OED/ currently has a first quotation for /electronic mail/ in 
>this sense from 1975; the shorter /email/ is first attested four 
>years later, in 1979. Although this doesn't seem like a very large 
>gap in time, it seems unlikely that the 1979 quotation represents 
>the coinage of /email/, taken as it is from a professional journal:
>
>    //1979 /Electronics/ 7 June 63 (heading) Postal Service pushes ahead
>    with E-mail.
>
>It seems probable that a computer whiz somewhere may have used 
>/email /first. Perhaps earlier evidence lies in an internal company 
>memo, a software manual, or even in an item of 'electronic mail'? 
>We'd like your help in finding such an example.
>------------------
>
>**
>
>--
>In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
>In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra