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| We take for granted how E-mail has become an integral part of our society. This is a pity because the history of how E-mail started is worth appreciating. Here's a brief history of how E-mail started that can help readers learn about how E-mail has become integrated in our society. E-mail as we know it first began in the early 1960's when computer programmers wrote program codes that took advantage of new timeshare technology. These program codes enabled users to send and exchange text messages through shared terminals that "shared" memory space with a centralized computer system. This was a primitive form of electric messaging that had some of its roots in telegraphic communications. This set the stage for improvements in the early 1970's by Ray Tomlinson that that allowed users to "send" messages across a local network of computers. Tomlinson's work is also notable because he created the "user@host" format that we use today for email addresses. Later refinements in 1972 and 1973 of Tomlinson's work allowed users to sort their messages by the date and time they were sent to users. These applications were very slow and took up a lot of expensive memory space. However, they set the stage for refinements in the mid and late 1970's that made E-mail applications more practical. These refinements included a simplified sending procedure and the first practical applications that allowed people to answer messages. As a result of these changes, E-mail applications were one step closer to being commercially reliable. All that was needed now was a reliable electronic clearinghouse, or "server", that allowed computer to handle and transmit large amounts of messages at the same time. This problem was solved in 1982 when University of California (Berkley) computer scientist Eric Allman created an application called "Delivermail" that acted as a primitive server for existing UNIX messaging programs. Once this was produced, the "Delivermail" server helped MCI and the National Science foundation develop E-mail applications for commercial use. All it took was a re-scaling of Allman's work to create larger servers to handle more expansive computer networks' messaging needs. Once this work was completed, today's E-mail services as we know it debuted in 1993 and haven't looked back. As a result, the history of how E-mail started must credit Eric Allman's "Delivermail" application and Ray Tomlinson's construction of E-mail's basic format as the key innovations that have made E-mail possible. That is the history of the email address. I hope you enjoyed it! |