History of Email
When you look at the history of email, it becomes readily
apparent that it was an evolution of the use of technology as much as an act of
outright invention that led to email being created. The evolution of email
starts with a system called ARPANet. There were several different versions of
network-based communication that were used along the history of email. As each
of these systems of network communication evolved further, they eventually
turned into more practical solutions and, at a certain point, email as we
understand it today was invented.
Ray Tomlinson
If you were on a game show and had the category History of Email,
and were asked for a simple answer to who invented email, you would do well to
say Ray Tomlinson. Ray Tomlinson actually pioneered the idea of using the @
symbol to reach people over electronic communications. His system was very
similar to what is still in use today. In the system that Ray Tomlinson
devised, the name of the person preceded the @ and the @ was followed by the
name of the computer. Of course, in today's world, we use the name of the
domain. Ray Tomlinson is probably the most important name in the history of email.
The history of email, if we use Ray Tomlinson as the
inventor, began in 1972. The history of email does not actually begin there,
however. Different systems were used to provide the same type of functionality
that email provides today. The history of email, in fact, begins with somebody
using a directory as shared storage.
I Put it In Your Network Folder
The history of email actually starts with the history of
networking. When the first networked computers were brought online, they
operated off a mainframe. The computer you actually sat behind and typed on was
what was called a dumb terminal. A dumb terminal had no intelligence--that is to
say, processing power--of its own, and was therefore given the unfortunate
moniker "dumb". When people were using these dumb terminals, the
history of email began, if we are to understand it as a service rather than a
specific incarnation of the service.
In those networked folders on those mainframes, users would
sometimes drop files into somebody else's folder. The difference between this
and the present-day usage of email is that people were effectively sharing
files on what amounted to the same computer. Even though this is the case, the
use of mainframe folders as ways of sharing information is an important
development in the history of email. In fact, it is probably the first instance
where people shared information exclusively in electronic form rather than
printing it out and sharing it on paper, which is the heart of email.
The Military
ARPANet was very much attached to the United States
military. It's not surprising, then, that some of the first adopters of
electronic communications in the history of email were military personnel. Some
sources estimate that, by the early 1970s, there were hundreds of people using email
services in their earliest form over military networks.
The history of email for civilians begins somewhere around
the mid-1990s. During this period people started to become familiar with the
actual workings of the system and they started to realize it could be a
tremendous resource for them in terms of communication. Today, email lookup
services, free email services, paid email services through your ISP and more
all represent the current state of the history of email. It's doubtful that, in
the future, email will not evolve into an even more complex and useful product
than it already is.