[ih] from whence cometh ">" ?

[Nigel Roberts]

My recollection is that I first encountered it on USENET - we didn't use 
it in emails in DEC in the early 1980s.

But memory fades.

Nigel

PS As I recall it, a "from" in "from whence" is otiose. It's either 
"from where", or "whence" (which can mean 'to' OR 'from').

On 14/10/2025 14:38, Craig Partridge via Internet-history wrote:
> 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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>