[ih] from whence cometh ">" ?

[John Levine]

It appears that Dave Crocker via Internet-history <dcrocker at bbiw.net> said:
>I recall the >From convention being done by Sendmail. Maybe 
>delivermail.  I thought it introduced it.  (And unfortunately the 
>convention persists.)

I think it's older than that, done by /bin/mail long before anyone
connected Unix systems to the Arpanet.  

It was a two-minute hack to separate mail messages in a single file mbox,
and we're still doing it 50 years later.  I can ask on the Unix history society
list.

R's,
John