[ih] First ARPANET Link Put Into Service: November 21, 1969

[Dave Crocker]

On 11/24/2025 2:25 AM, Steve Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> When
> email first became operational, he wrote a TECO program to read email.


This being a history list, it's worth noting that this was RD and is 
credited as the first purpose-built per-message reading and handling 
application.  (Tenex already had readmail, which just dumped out 
everything in the inbox file since the last time readmail had been run.)

RD functionality was re-implemented, producing two new versions. One, by 
Marty Yonke was BananaRD.  (Banana was a community slang term for 
spiffy, as I recall).

Very shortly after that and derived from the same code base, John Vittal 
released MSG, which was the first application to have a reply (answer) 
function, which allowed very quick and easy email exchanges.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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