2 Chapter 2: A Brief History of Email

☞ Authorial commentary is italicized. 

While we access it via browser tabs, desktop applications, and phone apps on a more or less constant basis, email is essentially just a system of rules and processes guiding the delivery of electronic messages. That’s all email is- there’s lots of interest to network engineers and computer scientists, but the technology itself is fairly simple, especially compared to how other computer and internet-based technologies have developed. It’s the human element of email that makes it interesting, frustrating, boring, time-consuming, but certainly important- “The internet has, among other things, substantially contributed to the evolution of and, maybe, a revolution in human interaction. We are not only on the internet, we are also in the internet.” (Xie et al., 2021, p.3)

Still, the history of the technology affects how we use it, and also affects the technical elements that allow for senders to convey and use pragmatic features. Even in 1997, email was a critical technology but something that prompted mixed feelings- “Electronic mail has become the unexciting and mundane electronic communication medium we love to hate. It wasn’t always that way. Hate is a fairly recent emotion” (Berghel, 1997, p. 11).

Despite the feeling of many office workers, email isn’t something that has always been with us. Email accompanied and promoted the development of the earliest forms of the digital revolution, and its utility and effectiveness, paired with the advent of affordable personal computing, helped to make computers, the internet and email itself essentially universal in modern life.

The internet- a technology which literally surrounds us every day and shapes every aspect of our society- began not as a commercial project, but as a surprising outlay of Cold War-era governmental research.

A researcher at the RAND Corporation in California had an idea which in 1969 led to the ARPANET, the predecessor of the internet as we know it. The idea was the answer to the question of how the US military’s computers could connect after a nuclear attack that had destroyed nodes in a network. The solution was a distributed network where ‘packets’ of information could be rerouted through another node once one ceased functioning. (Xie et al., 2021, p.1)

ARPANET had few similarities to the all-encompassing, multiple-connected-devices per user, with billions of people version of the internet we have now. Predating widespread personal computer ownership, ARPANET linked large research firms, universities, and government in a small number of nodes made up of monumentally expensive computer workstations. Around the time email was created ARPANET had “…28 nodes. And at each site there was maybe 50 or 100, at the most, usually often less than that, individuals who had access, and so you were talking about a community of 1,000, maybe 2,000 individuals that could communicate this way.” (Tomlinson, 2009, p.13)

One way to track the historic importance of a medium is to see when it first appears in that most American of pursuits, the lawsuit. Email- in its first technical iterations- began to appear in legal cases in the 1970s, and the first Supreme Court case mentioning email came as early as 1972 (Thumma & Jackson, 2000). Modern readers may be surprised at the technical limitations of early email systems. Thumma & Jackson describe a legal case from 1976 which involved Western Union Mailgram, a service where messages were electronically sent to post offices, printed on paper, and were then physically mailed to recipients (2000).

Email was a very early digital technology. A forerunner to email was included in a proposal by Dick Watson in 1971 to have digital messages remotely sent to local printers, which would physically print out messages on paper (Partridge 2008). An engineer named Ray Tomlinson took an alternative approach he viewed as simpler since he viewed needing to physically print messages as adding needless complexity (Partridge 2008). Tomlinson married two extant programs- a local message sending program and a file transfer service- and by combining them allowed external messages to be transferred by alerting the program a new message had arrived and then using a file transfer protocol to remotely add the message text to a local mailbox file (Partridge 2008). Since messages were digitally transferred sent outside of a local network, the program needed to know which server to connect to in order to update the local mailbox, which was accomplished by, “… using the ’@’ sign to divide the user’s account name from the name of the host where the account resided, resulting in the now ubiquitous user@remote format” (Partridge, 2008, p. 4).

Probably due to its simple beginnings, there was no “Mr. Watson — come here — I want to see you.” (Bruno, 1999) moment for the first sent and received email. When asked in an oral history interview about the first email message, Tomlinson said, “…there’s really no way to know because I would type whatever came to mind, usually you just, you know, dragging some fingers across, [the keyboard] you know, or if I was feeling really bored, I might say, “Well, how much of the Gettysburg Address can I remember?” (Tomlinson, 2009, p.10)

The first email messages were sent on a test basis in late 1971, and the first operational use came in 1972 via an update of TENEX, the operating system which incorporated Tomlinson’s first, simple email program (Tomlinson 2009). In the same interview, Tomlinson described why email quickly became a key technology in the early history of the internet by filling a communicative gap.

Well, it was adopted fairly quickly. It seemed to fill a niche that was needed, because at the time telephone answering machines existed but they were very uncommon. If you were lucky, the person you wanted to contact had a secretary who would take a message and then somebody would call you back. If you were calling somebody who got a lot of this, then they would have an answering service or something like that. But this, being able to communicate with somebody who was not ready to answer the telephone right then and there… there was nothing between that point in the spectrum and sending a letter by postal mail. (Tomlinson, 2009, p.13)

Tomlinson’s early email program on TENEX evolved into John Vittal’s MSG, which included features familiar to modern users like the ability to reply to messages without starting an entirely new email, a subject line, and the ability to forward messages to new recipients (Partridge, 2008). Many familiar features used by modern email clients began to appear. By 1975, the RFC-680 standard included the, “…TO field, but also CC (carbon copy), BCC (blind carbon copy)…” (Partridge, 2008, p.10). In 1977, the RFC-733 standard included, “…a clear statement of how to include names with email addresses. The format was to put the email address in angle brackets (< >), as in <‘David H. Crocker’> / crocker@rand-unix” (Partridge, 2008, p.10), an important ability as the number of people connected to ARPANET increased. Using commas to separate addresses and having users’ names contained in brackets is still present in modern email systems.

Other developments we can recognize in modern email systems emerged early in the history of email. Emailed file attachments was added to ARPANET in 1976, an early form of a social network (a bulletin board) began in 1977, a computer worm spreadable by email and spam email messages were first sent in 1978, and commercial email use became more common among large companies in the same year (Feinler & Vittel, 2022).

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) was released in the early 1980s (Partridge 2008; Feinler & Vittel, 2022), and it remains one of the oldest early internet technologies still in common use- “…[it] remains the way email is transferred today, 25 years later” (Partridge, 2008, p.17). While still in use, SMTP is a product of a much smaller connected world which predated the wider internet- “However, as originally conceived, SMTP — the protocol responsible for relaying messages between mail servers — does not authenticate senders or encrypt mail in transit” (Durumeric et al., 2015). The original ARPANET framework was switched to an early form of TCP/IP protocols in 1983, which solidified SMTP usage and began the process of transitioning early technology towards our modern internet (Feinler & Vittel, 2022). The Domain Name System (DNS) launched in 1983, making internet web addresses significantly more user friendly and changing how the domain portion of email messages are handled (Feinler & Vittel, 2022). Server based email message access- keeping messages on an internet-based device which is then accessed locally via the internet as opposed to storing email message only on a local device’s memory- began in 1984 with the Post Office Protocol (POP) (Feinler & Vittel, 2022). POP worked across different hardware and software (Feinler & Vittel, 2022), something essential to the development of email as a universal technology and a significant difference from its first iteration with TENEX, which only worked on TENEX systems networked via ARPANET. By 1987, there were an estimated 975,000 commercial email users and the idea of email phishing as a security concern was described (Feinler & Vittel, 2022). The Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) was released in 1988, and similarly to POP, remains in active (but updated) use in email clients today.

Figure 1

Screenshot of Updated Versions of POP & IMAP In-Use on Contemporary Email Platforms.

Note: It is almost incredible to consider that two technologies which predate the modern internet- POP & IMAP- not only still exist today but underpin how email functions. This screenshot shows IMAP and POP used on a Chrome browser opened to a tab with Gmail’s settings.

The modern internet took shape as personal computers became more widespread and far less expensive, graphical interfaces made technology more accessible, workplaces became increasingly networked, and as ARPANET transitioned over to the open, nongovernmental internet we have today.

☞ Al Gore did actually introduce the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 as a senator, which marked the full commercialization of the proto-internet by withdrawing government funding in favor of commercial access (Feinler & Vittel, 2022)

Tim Berners-Lee proposed the framework that became the modern internet in 1989 and it went live on December 30, 1990, which occurred with roughly 15 million email users (Feinler & Vittel, 2022). Email use grew tremendously afterwards, as internet access became more accessible and less expensive thanks to early dial-up internet access and more widespread modem technology, which “… converts the digital signal from your computer into an analog signal that can be carried by the phone line…” (USR, n.d.).

From that point forward, email messaging grew to be a global universal as essentially every one of the billions of people connected to the internet needed an email address. As mobile device access expanded, so did email messaging. Now, it follows us everywhere- in the workplace, yes, but also on the bus, in our homes, adjacent to our very bodies as our phones ding and buzz in our pockets at home, alerting us to email messages.

It is not for lack of trying that email remains a standard way to communicate- the mobile device resolution drove texting-like apps to prominence, but email’s particular design features make it especially resilient.

☞ An early form of mobile device texting- SMS messaging- is older than one might imagine, with the first text sent in 1992 after being proposed in 1985- prior to the modern internet (Feinler & Vittel, 2022)

In considering email’s history, we should reflect on what came before it and where the technology is heading. Did hand or typewritten memos follow office workers home to bother them during dinner? Did workers spend more time tapping on keyboards before or after the advent of email- and has the technology democratized the workplace or driven us into a digital divide? What might have been a phone call or face-to-face chat is now an email- is that better, or worse for workers and companies? Has widespread email made us more productive, less involved with community, more distracted with family, or some combination of all these elements (or none of them)? How will the rise of generative AI tools shape email as a technology and email writing? Will email writers ever cease to create unmanageable multi-response threads?

☞ It’s difficult find concrete answers to these deep social , economic, and technological questions, so instead I present The Paperwork Explosion (Scott, 2000) as a window into a pre-email age.

References:

Berghel, H. (1997). Email—The good, the bad, and the ugly. Communications of the ACM, 40(1). 11-15.

Bruno, L. (1999). ‘Mr. Watson, Come Here’ First release of Bell papers goes online. Information Bulletin. 58(4). Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9904/bell.html

Durumeric, Z., Adrian, D., Mirian, A., Kasten, J., Burszstein, E., Lidzborski, N., Thomas, K., Eranti, V., Bailey, M., & Halderman, J. (2015) Neither snow nor rain nor MITM… An empirical analysis of email delivery security. IMC ’15: Proceedings of the 2015 Internet Measurement Conference. 27-39, https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2815675.2815695

Feinler, E. & Vittal, J. (2022). Email innovation timeline. Computer History Museum, 102806104, https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102806104/

Partridge, C. (2008). The technical development of Internet Email. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 30. 3-29. 10.1109/MAHC.2008.32

Scott, R. (2000). IBM MT/ST: The Paperwork Explosion. [Song]. On Manhattan Research, Inc.. Basta Music. https://youtu.be/gDqGZR6V6mY?si=RqI8wlmlYA4_5UqZ

Thumma, S. & Jackson, D. (2000). The history of electronic mail in litigation. Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal, 16(1), Article 1. https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/chtlj/vol16/iss1/1/

Tomlinson, R. (2009). Oral History of Raymond (Ray) Tomlinson. Interview by Marc Weber & Gardner Hendrie. Computer History Museum, 102702118, https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102702118/

Xie, C., Yus, F., & Haberland, H.(2021). Introduction: Approaching internet pragmatics. In C. Xie, F. Yus, & H. Haberland (Eds.), Approaches to internet pragmatics: Theory and practice (pp. 1-23). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.318.int

USR (US Robotics). (n.d.). Dial-up modems: Modems 101 – The Basics. https://www.usr.com/education/dialup-modems-101-basics/