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Cybertelecom
Federal Internet Law & Policy
An Educational Project |
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EMail History |
Single Computer Email had existed from the earlier 1960s. One account references the Compatible Time-Sharing System, started in 1961, that permitted multiple users at MIT to share computer resources. The habit was established by the users of leaving messages for one another by drafting a message and saving it in a common directory with a file name such as "TO TOM." When Tom logged on, he would access the message. [Vleck] This was followed up in 1965 with the create of the MAIL command which attached a message to an existing user's MAIL BOX file.
Licklider was talking to people about inter-computer mail as far back as 1968. Larry Roberts wrote a macro in 1969 that sent mail across the early ARPANet. [Vleck]The first RFC related to email was released in 1971 entitled the "Mail Box Protocol." It is not clear that this protocol was implimented. [Tomlinson]
Email was one of the first applications on the Internet and at the beginning accounted for most of its traffic. [Denning 4] In 1971, Ray Tomlinson of BBN modified the existing SNDMSG program to function over a network and send messages to remote computers, and decided to use the now ubiquitous"@" sign. [Tomlinson] [Nerds p 104] "A 1973 ARPA report showed that three-quarters of all use was email." [Nerds p 109] [Wikipedia, Email: History]
In 1973, at the Network Mail Meeting held at SRI-ARC, the group agreed to the use of the "@" sign in the email "TO" field. [RFC 469] This consensus overcame an interoperablility issue, in that in some systems such as Multics, the "@" sign was a kill command. [Padlinksy]
Kleinrock: "They soon began to realize that there was a benefit [to joining the ARPANet]. You see the biggest surprise about the ARPA network use was e-mail. It was an ad hoc add-on by BBN, and it just blossomed. And that sucked a lot of people in. It still is the biggest use of networks today." [Babbage 24]
- 2007 - FTC Spam Summit
- 2006 - Reputation Services
- 2004 - FTC Spam Summit
- 2003 - Can Spam Act
- 2002 - Sender accreditation (whitelist)
- Sender pays for improved delivery. Bonded sender.
- 2001: RFC 2821, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (April 2001) (This document is a self-contained specification of the basic protocol for the Internet electronic mail transport.)
- 1999 - negative reputation services (blocklists) MAPS/Trend, Spamhaus, Senderbase, Symantic, TrustedSource
- 1997 - Supreme Court of Tennessee, Internet Advertising and Tennessee Disbarment, In Re: Laurence A. Canter, 1997.
- 1994 - Press Release- PSI And Canter & Siegel Negotiate Agreement On Future. 1994
- 1993: AOL and Delphi interconnect their proprietary email systems to the Internet.
- 1989: Compuserve email connects to NSFNET
- 1988: Vint Cerf arranges for a connection of MCI Mail to NSFNET on an experimental basis.
- 1985: After 3 years, USPS terminates E-COM service. [USPS]
- 1982: RFC 821, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (Aug. 1982)
- 1982: USPS Introduces E-COM (messages that originate as email, are printed out, and then delivered in hard copy form). [USPS] FCC asserts jurisdiction over E-COM as a telecommunications service.
- 1982: David Crocker, RFC 822, Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages (Aug. 13, 1982)
By 1977, the Arpanet employed several informal standards for the text messages (mail) sent among its host computers. It was felt necessary to codify these practices and provide for those features that seemed imminent. The result of that effort was Request for Comments (RFC) #733, "Standard for the Format of ARPA Network Text Message", by Crocker, Vittal, Pogran, and Henderson. The specification attempted to avoid major changes in existing software, while permitting several new features. This document revises the specifications in RFC #733 , in order to serve the needs of the larger and more complex ARPA Internet. Some of RFC #733 's features failed to gain adequate acceptance. In order to simplify the standard and the software that follows it, these features have been removed. A different addressing scheme is used, to handle the case of inter-network mail; and the concept of re-transmission has been introduced.
- 1979: USPS attempts to ban private email service, but is thwarted by the FCC and the US Postal Commission. [Bovard]
- 1979: Meeting at BBN to discuss differences and incompatibilities between different ARPA email services. A record of the meeting is recounted in Jon Postel, RFC 808, Summary of Computer Mail Services Meeting Held at BBN on 10 January 1979 (March 1, 1982) A list of all of the differing email services was compiled by Prof David Farber and presented in Appendix A.
- 1979: Former ARPA Chief and email advocate SJ Lukasik becomes FCC Chief Scientist
- 1979: " President Carter was supporting a USPS proposal to offer limited electronic message service where the messages would be transferred from one post office to another electronically, and then would be brought to the consumer ? s address by the mailman. This threat brought the research community together and they along with the US Justice Department and the FCC opposed any plans of government intervention in e-mail. They all successfully lobbied for E-mail to be left up to the free market." [Akkad]
- 1978- Reaction to the DEC Spam of 1978
- 1977: DARPA initiative to transform various differing email formats into a single, standard specification. David Crocker, John Vittal, Kenneth Pogran, Austin Henderson, RFC 733, Standard for the Format of ARPA Network Text Message (Nov. 21, 1977) ("This standard specifies a syntax for text messages which are passed between computer users within the framework of "electronic mail"." RFC notes that this work was funded by DARPA.)
- 1977: USPS initiates exploration of email
- 1973: 75% of traffic on ARPANet is email. [Akkad] Study was conducted pursuant to request from ARPA Chief SJ Lukasik
- 1972: RFC 354, Comments on the File Transfer Protocol , ¶ 21 (Aug 18, 1972) (adding Mail File "MLFL" and the MAIL command to FTP)
- 1973: Stephen Lukasik becomes Chief of ARPA. He was a major proponent of network research of of electronic mail. Would become FCC Chief Scientist in 1979.
- 1971 - Email is sent on MIT's CTSS to all recipients with the anti war message "There is no way to Peace. Peace is the way!" [Vleck]
- 1971: Ray Tomlinson develops an email application for over the ARPANet, permitting individuals to send messages over the network and alert the recipient that a message had been received. Tomlinson chose the "@" sign for email addresses.
- 1970 - Monty Phython Spam Skit airs
- 1960s Email developed for time share computers (individuals could message each other on the same mainframe computer; but not over a network)
- 1890s: USPS declared it illegal to deliver paper messages through pneumatic tubes under city streets [Bovard]
Standards
- J. Klensin, IETF RFC 2821, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (April 2001).
- J. Postel, IETF RFC 821, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (August 1982).
- S. Sluizer, J Postel, NWG RFC 772, Mail Transfer Protocol (Sept 1980)
- J Postel, RFC 706, On the Junk Mail Program (1975)
- J White, RFC 524, A Proposed Mail Protocol (June 1973)
- Michael Kudlick, RFC 469, Network Mail Meeting Summary (Mar. 1973) (agreeing to use the "@" sign proposed by Tomlinson)
- Abhay Bhushan, RFC 385 Comments on the File Transfer Protocol (Aug. 1972) (adding the command MAIL to FTP)
- RW Watson, RFC 196, Mail Box Protocol (1971)
Papers
Books
- Douglas Aide, Monopoly Mail: Privatizing the US Postal Service
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