[ih] Internet mail in the 80's

[Greg Skinner]

On May 21, 2026, at 11:19 PM, Nigel Roberts via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> Not connected to 3com in any way, but I have a vague recollection of a site somewhere on the net that you could post to Usenet using email, somehow.
> 
> I'm sure others have better memories than me.
> 

I recall many Usenet sites supported this feature, but don’t remember which ones off the top of my head.  With sendmail, one would put an entry into the ‘aliases’ file such as:

news-alias: |"/usr/bin/inews -h"

Sending an email message to news-alias at the_system_offering_the_feature (or whatever convention was supported) in an acceptable format (such as RFC 850 <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc850/>) would pipe the message to inews with the -h option, which posted the message on the system offering the feature.

--gregbo