[ih] Reporter query on the history of greater-than in quoted replies

[Greg Skinner]

Noel Chiappa wrote:

> Inclusion in a news reader is probably what made it _popular_. But there may
> have been an _individual_ who came up with it, and it got taken up into the
> news reader(s) after people saw it and started copying it.

> So probably the place to check now is to go into Usenet archives (assuming
> they are still online, I lost track of their comings and goings) and look for
> instances, trying to track the behaviour backwards in time...

There are searchable Usenet archives available via Google Groups (groups.google.com).  It helps to know the Usenet group in question.  Searching for groups containing ‘net.mail' returned net.mail, net.mail.headers, and net.mail.msggroup. I recall this type of discussion took place in those groups.

—gregbo