[ih] Fwd: Re: Early Internet history

[Vint Cerf]

what was the time frame for CSS Mail?

v


On Wed, Jul 4, 2018 at 2:43 PM, Dave Crocker <dhc2 at dcrocker.net> wrote:

> with Tom's permission.
>
>
> -------- Forwarded Message --------
> Subject: Re: Early Internet history
> Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2018 09:41:02 -0400
> From: Tom Van Vleck <thvv at multicians.org>
> To: Dave Crocker <dcrocker at bbiw.net>
>
>
> > On Jul 3, 2018, at 10:17 PM, Dave Crocker <dcrocker at bbiw.net> wrote:
> >
> > I'm trying to make a point of notifying anyone I mentioned during the
> > interview, mostly in case I got something wrong.  I've already had
> > two corrections to notify the Collective folks about...
>
> Hi Dave, very interesting!
>
> (I am not a fan of podcasts.. too linear.  My superpower is READING and
> I can read faster than I can listen.)
>
> There are a few things I would have said a little differently than you did.
>
> MAIL
>
> The late Noel Morris and I did the CTSS MAIL command together, and he
> should not be forgotten.
> We wrote MAIL because it had been proposed in a MIT Comp Center memo by
> Louis Pouzin, Glenda Schroeder, and Pat Crisman, all of whom worked at
> MIT on CTSS for F. J. Corbató. We wanted to use it. Nobody had time to
> write MAIL though.
> Noel and I were users of CTSS and asked if we could write MAIL and
> contribute it to the system.
>
> Your description of CTSS MAIL mixes implementation and function.
> Functionally, a user wrote a small text file, and then typed MAIL MY
> FILE M1416 786 to send it. (Files on CTSS had two-word names. User
> addresses on CTSS had a "problem number" like M1416 and a "programmer
> number" assigned by the Comp Center.) The recipient would be notified if
> his MAIL BOX was non-empty, and could view it with the PRINT command.
> Each user's MAIL BOX file had the file mode "private" meaning that only
> the account owner could read or modify it -- except that
> system-privileged programs could do so.
>
> As we were implementing MAIL, we wrote the absolute minimum program that
> would work.
> There were many suggested features, options, etc. We left them out.
> Idea being to get it working, and put features in later after community
> discussion.
>
> The essential features of MAIL were
> - user to user, i.e. personal
> - asynchronous
> - file based, persistent
> - secure
>
> Messages were
> - identified by sender and date
> - limited in size to one disk record: 2592 BCD characters
>
> We didn't send between computers because we had only one computer. We
> didn't send graphics because nobody had a graphics terminal. We didn't
> have SUBJECT any other mail headers; but conventions rapidly sprang up.
> We limited messages in size because disk space was very scarce and
> expensive.
>
>
> Multics
>
> As the editor of Multicians.org I am sometimes vexed by people's
> theories about Unix. Ken and Dennis would probably not have "gone off on
> their own" and written Unix if Bell Labs management had not dropped out
> of the Multics project in 1969. The size and scope of Unix was a result
> of the resources available to its creators. Ken and Dennis made useful
> contributions to Multics and never questioned its scope or elaborateness
> in my hearing while they worked on the system. Ken was one of the
> smartest people I have ever met: his clarity of thought and writing were
> an inspiration, and he was a great programmer and colleague.
>
>
> regards, tom
>
>
>
>
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>



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