[ih] from whence cometh ">" ?

[Craig Partridge]

I just spent half an hour digging through the msggroup, tcp-ip and
header-people mailing lists from the mid to late 1970s and none of them use
the diple.

So I'm guessing it was an innovation in one of the email or netnews reading
tools developed in the late 1970s to early 1980s.  There are lots of
choices that appeared about that time: readnews, rn, Berkeley Mail (?), MH
and, I think, some Emacs reading tools.

Craig

On Tue, Oct 14, 2025 at 5:04 AM Eliot Lear via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> Hi Internet Historians,
>
> I wonder if anyone knows the earliest use of "> " as a means to quote
> text.  A research here in Switzerland is asking me.  I can only date it
> as far back as "rn" and netnews, but surely it goes back beyond 1984.
> The researcher mentioned that there have been various forms of a
> "diple"[1] as Ancient Greece and in the bible.  But when did it get
> picked up in Internet times?
>
> Any takers?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Eliot
>
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diple_(textual_symbol)
>
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