The History of Electronic Mail

https://www.multicians.org/thvv/mail-history.html

by bpierre • 3 years ago

43 25 3 years ago

Interesting, but as with many such history lessons, what one considers the origin of a given technology depends a lot on where one was at the time.

For email, I still consider https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20... the most complete overview.

sandworm101• 3 years ago

The history of email without a reference to Monty Python? How quickly we forget.

https://youtu.be/anwy2MPT5RE

glimshe• 3 years ago

Many people don't realize how hard it used to be to communicate just a few decades ago, especially across countries. Phone rates were ridiculously high (dollars per minute at times) and there was no email/IM.

When my dad went to Germany for work in the 80s, my family used the phone for urgent matters and paper letters for "long reads". Letters would take a couple of weeks to get there from South America, and a couple more weeks to come back with the answer, leading to a 4-6 week roundtrip.

euroderf3• 3 years ago

A long distance phone call from across the country used to be a family event.

nytesky• 3 years ago

Heck many of my school friends were long distance because we lived on county line — I never called anybody except for very brief logistics.

Scalene22• 3 years ago

I did the math for how much I would have spent on long distance during the pandemic if it was in 1970, it worked out to several hundred thousand dollars.

ghaff4• 3 years ago

Even without going back to 1970, there's an "interesting" question of how we would have adapted to the pandemic even 20 or 25 years ago. To me, it seems fairly obvious that we couldn't reasonably have just switched to WFH for an extended period--even leaving more expensive (albeit not 1970 levels) telephony charges out of the equation. Many, maybe the majority, of people were just getting dial-up Internet in the mid- to late-90s and basically none of the Internet services we take for granted today like Amazon existed until fairly late in that period.

throw0101a• 3 years ago

Letters would take a couple of weeks to get there from South America, and a couple more weeks to come back with the answer, leading to a 4-6 week roundtrip.

If you heard that someone in your (ethnic) community was travelling (especially flying) back to the 'Old Country', the person would often be asked to take various letters during the trip to folks 'back home' (and then perhaps replies on the return).

paleotrope• 3 years ago

I distinctly recall in the early 90s when I first used a government system and was able to send essentially an instant message to someone on a terminal on the other side of the global. It was quite amazing.

And then I called that person and paid 300 dollars for a 45 minute phone call.

talkingtab• 3 years ago

No history of electronic mail is complete without the stories of those who experienced it as a new thing. We often cannot understand how technology changed things - what was it like before email?

I have two stories.

I had a technical question about something and the author of the paper was in Japan. I could call or send a letter. Calling was difficult, expensive and awkward. Mail would take weeks. Then I noticed there was an email attached to the paper and on a whim, sent and email. I was stunned and bewildered to get an answer to my question less than twenty minutes later. From Japan! I just remember the feeling of staring at the reply and not really comprehending how it could be there.

Also, people started mailing lists. It was quite exciting because now there were places you could hear about other people working on the same problems. One day I got an email about a new mailing list and promptly signed up. A few minutes later I started getting tens and then hundreds of email messages about people signing up - "Yes add me to the list". Then a few minutes later, thousands of messages about "Remove me from the list". People did not understand the difference between "reply" and "reply all" or maybe the mailing list software had a bug. But it was hilarious.

magpi3• 3 years ago

My friend and I would be on the phone while we sent each other emails and we would be shocked at how instantaneously they were delivered. But now that I think about it, it is interesting to think how we weren't equally shocked that our voices were being instantly transmitted over the phone at the same time.

Scalene22• 3 years ago

To be fair to you, you may not have understood how much data voice and text each took. An email can have hundreds of words sent in an instant, whereas a phone call is limited to a few words per second.

mattl• 3 years ago

What was the email attached to the paper about? Was it notes on the paper or something?

hoppyhoppy2• 3 years ago

I think they just meant the author's email address was listed on the paper.

2-718-281-828• 3 years ago

there you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szdbKz5CyhA

ochrist• 3 years ago

Telex predates this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telex

ghaff4• 3 years ago

My first job in the offshore drilling industry involved a huge amount of Telex which was the primary way we communicated with rigs' shore locations. (I don't think we even had direct communications to the rigs themselves except latterly.) Basically, we (well our admins) typed up memos which were sent by in internal office mail to the communications room on the top floor which would send and receive Telexes from the various locations.

WalterBright• 3 years ago

Should include telegrams.

The History of Electronic Mail

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