[ih] from whence cometh ">" ?

[vinton cerf]

there was also an effort to implement a secure version of mail - that did
not work out and we have ended up with things like PGP and some other
variations that have made it into practice but not as widely as I think
many might wish.

v


On Wed, Oct 15, 2025 at 11:04 AM Dave Crocker via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> > You are absolutely right, David.  It is absolutely clear that the SMTP
> was derived from Tenex mail.
> > The similarity in the commands and responses is unmistakable! How did I
> miss it!
>
>
> This venue's having a focus on historical detail, it's worth being clear
> about specific bits of the email origin story:
>
> 1. Initial Arpanet discussions about email were going in the direction
> of creating a mechanism to send an email to a remote printer, print it
> out, and have it distributed through inter-office mail.(RFC 278)  This
> matched the model for memo transmission in organizations of the time.
> (Possibly worth noting is that MCI Mail, built 10 years later, actual
> implemented this option -- albeit at a city level with 4-hour courier or
> overnight postal delivery.)
>
> 2. Ray Tomlinson did not like that approach and decided to do a quick
> hack to show an alternative, at the end of 1971. He modified Tenex
> sndmsg to support the @hostname syntax,  linked in the Tenex cpynet
> mechanism to move the message to the hostname host.  I don't recall
> whether mods to the receive side were required.  (I had not known about
> Ray's process for deciding to do this, until the relatively recent
> public issues with a guy's claiming to have invented emai. This prompted
> discussion within the email community, including Ray's reciting his
> motivational basis.  One might note some process similarity with the
> Multics -> Unix sequence...)
>
> 3. Since Tenex was popular in the Arpanet community, Ray's hack
> propagated quickly.
>
> 4. Email was not in the original 1971 or 1972 Bhushan FTP
> specifications, but discussions moved to the addition of the MAIL and
> MLFL commands, permitting sending a message to a single recipient.
> Craig's paper goes into the sequence in detail. From a quick scan, it
> appears the MAIL and MLFL command details did not show up in the FTP
> spec, itself, until 1980.
>
> 5. The success of this early service prompted discussions about a more
> capable version, with proposals inside and outside the Arpanet
> community.  MTP was an example from inside.  It did not go far.  A
> 'S'implified version, was produced at the end of 1982, 10 years after
> email had been in operation on the Arpanet.
>
>
> d/
>
> --
> Dave Crocker
>
> Brandenburg InternetWorking
> bbiw.net
> bluesky: @dcrocker.bsky.social
> mast: @dcrocker at mastodon.social
>
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> -
> Unsubscribe:
> https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/9b6ef0621638436ab0a9b23cb0668b0b?The%20list%20to%20be%20unsubscribed%20from=Internet-history
>