[ih] Eric Allman giving a public talk on the history of email

[Karl Auerbach]

A long time ago, 1980/1981, before sendmail, I was at Interactive 
Systems in Santa Monica.

Brian X (forgot his last name) and I came up with a system we called 
"queued ftp" - it was a store-and-forward system for file images, with 
delivery to a program.   It kinda resembled what would be a system of 
sendmail relays.

(I can't remember whether we were influenced by IBM's SNADS or whether 
that came later.)

We used our QFTP system as the engine underneath the email system we 
built, as well as for things like remote printing.

I gave a paper on this stuff at either USENIX or Unix Users Group at the 
old Jack Tarr hotel in San Francisco around 1980/81.  Eric A. chaired 
the session.

I'm not saying that the work that Brian X and I did at Interactive had 
any influence on sendmail, but I like to think we did.

By-the-way, we built this on PDP/11 Unix systems using Z80 based Unibus 
cards ("UMC cards) from ACC in Santa Barbara.

     --karl--