Email Innovation Timeline

EMAIL INNOVATION TIMELINE

Elizabeth Feinler and John Vittal

7/1/2022

The authors and the Computer History Museum are grateful to Vint Cerf for funding the digitization of relevant email historical materials. This includes selected records from the SRI ARC/NIC Collection (x3578.2006) and selected materials from John Vittal's collection at the Computer History Museum.

Copyright ? Computer History Museum. The Computer History Museum licenses the work to others under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit .

Email Bibliographic Timeline

Approximate date

1844 1914 1914 1924, May 1920s 1950 1958

1963 1965, August 6 1967, October 1969, Summer 1969, August 30 1969, December 1970, January 1970 1971 1971, Fall 1971 1971 1972, Early 1972, July 1972, August 1973, February 23 1973, August 1973, September 5 1973 1974, mid

Seminal Events

Event

First "electronic" mail service developed Teleprinter invented Amateur radio National Traffic System started Fax machine developed Teletypewriter switched communication service created Pagers introduced Switched networking used for government communications First computer-based chat service created First computer-based email program created Email is offered as one rationale for the ARPANET Multics adds email First ARPANET IMP delivered ARPANET research network starts operation MAILGRAM mail service initiated NLS Mail adds attachments Memo-styled email created Networked email demonstrated First spam email sent First text-oriented teleconferencing system developed Network mail capability becomes widely distributed Selective email-reading created ARPANET email transfer mechanism specified Uniformity in mail systems discussed Email messages linked into a "conversation" ARPANET mail headers specified First worldwide corporate email system created First "integrated" email system developed

See page

5 6 7 7 7 9 9

13 14 16 19 19 20 20 21 22 22 24 24 26 28 29 31 33 34 35 37

i

Email Bibliographic Timeline

Approximate date 1974, mid

1974, November 27 1975, April 30

1975, June 7 1975, June 30 1975, November 1975

1976, March 26 1976, Fall 1976, November 1976, November 8 1976, November 13 1977, May and November 1977, Fall 1977, December 1978, January ? February 1978, Early

1978, May 3

1978, August 18

1978, September 1978, Fall 1978-1979

1979, February

Event

MSG: the first modern email application introduced, includes Reply and Forward Unix MBOX file format developed First de facto standard of memo-oriented format for email published DARPA's MSGGroup working group formed "Electronic mail" term used for the first time Need to handle junk mail recognized Datacomputer repository, the Message Archiving & Retrieval Service, becomes available Email across a network is first used by a head of state Email is first used during a U.S. presidential campaign "Header-People" discussion list formed First attachments for ARPANET email added First stand-alone commercial email system offered ARPANET email message format standards developed

See page 37

39 42

43 43 46 47

49 50 51 51 52 54

Active message processing

55

First email-centric publication appears

56

Public community bulletin board established

58

Large companies now using email for internal

60

communications

First commercial junk (spam) email appears on the

60

ARPANET

Dial-up phone lines used to distribute email among Unix

61

systems

International email standards effort proposed

62

Email flows between the ARPANET and other networks

63

First user authentication and graphical user interface for

64

email developed

First email offering for home users

66

ii

Email Bibliographic Timeline

Approximate date 1979, Early

1979, March

1979, May 27 1979, June 1979, August

1979, September 24 1979 1980, January 1980, April 1980, June 1981, January

1981, Spring 1982, January 1982, August

1983, January 1

1983, April 1983, September 23 1983, November 1983, late 1984, February 13

1984, August 1984, October 1984, October 1985, September 1985, November

Event

See page

First client-server architecture for delivering email

67

developed

International protocol for email over X.25 networks

67

proposed

Dialnet announced

69

NLS adds automatically distributed email

70

USPS seeks to compete against commercial email

71

offerings

CompuServe enters the email game

72

Newsgroups effort starts

74

Postal services deliver faxes

75

International email standards specification begins

75

Binary data is encoded for transmission via email

76

CSNET enables universities without ARPANET access to

78

connect via Telenet

BITNET provides competition for CSNET and UUCP

79

Multimedia email appears

81

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) specification

82

published

The U.S. government networks transition to TCP/IP, and a

83

true internet is born

First US industry organization focused on email started

83

MCI Mail launched

84

First international email standard submitted for approval

84

Email gateways and bridges appear

85

First commercial service with a graphical user interface

86

offered

Internet email interfaced to MCI Mail

87

X.400 international email standard adopted

87

Mail is fetched from a mailbox server

87

Mail forwarded across mail system boundaries

89

Mail gateway standards specified

89

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In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

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