Email Milestones Timeline

EmailHistory.org (dcrocker, ed.)

6-sep-12 9:22 / DRAFT

This list is a developing record of major achievements in the history of electronic mail. It is being produced through open discussions at emailhistory.org. Major milestones are of many types, ranging from basic functionality to operational enhancement. Anything that the discussion group thinks might have been a noteworthy breakthrough is a candidate for inclusion. Community rough consensus -- in this case, the views of participants in the open mailhist list -- will be the arbiter.

As editor, I have taken the liberty of guessing at some of data. If there's a question mark, it means I'm not even close to sure that the guess is right. Even without a question mark, the list is certain to have errors and omissions. The current task, is to brainstorm, research and discuss entries and their details. Do post comments, corrections and additions to the mailing list. Please be gentle.

I've added the 'type' column to distinguish among categories of milestones. There is not (yet) consensus to include this column of information in the timeline, but I took editor's prerogative for the current version. I believe it aids in dealing with scaling; There are many milestones and being able to look at subsets within categories is likely to make discussion more tractable and it is certain to make reading more tractable for those being introduced to the timeline (when presented as a layered timeline.)

So:

Distinguish: UA vs. MTA vs. Systems architecture vs, ?
Distinguish: Invention vs. Commercialization vs. Standardization
("invention" means first demonstration or documentation)

When

What

Who

Description

Type

Citation

1965?

Email

T. Van Vleck, MIT

First popular computer-based electronic mail service as a posting/delivery construct with addressing

System

1971

Networked Mail

R. Tomlinson, BBN

Exchange of mail across machines

Transfer

1972?

Memo style

R. Tomlinson, BBN?

Message object with header fields

User

1972

Message Management

L. Roberts, ARPA

Per-message mail reader - RD

User

http://www.packet.cc/internet.html

1973

Basic transfer standard

A. Bhushan, MIT

Mail commands in File Transfer Protocol

Standard

1973 Message object
Abhay Bhushan/MIT-DMCG, Ken Pogran/MIT-MULTICS, Ray Tomlinson/BBN-TENEX, Jim White/SRI-ARC
informal mail header de facto Standard RFC 561

1975

Reply

J. Vittal, USC-ISI

Answer command formulates new message from old

User

1975

Integrated reader/writer

J. Vittal, USC-ISI

Reply & Forward dispatched creation program

User

?

Commercial email

OnTyme/Tymnet?

First email service available to public

Commercial

{I can't find online references to this! /d}

DB Store

MIT / MSGDMS

Common message store

User

1977

Message object

RFC733 / D. Crocker, Rand; J. Vittal, BBN; K. Pogran, MIT; D. Austin Henderson, BBN

Formal standardization of message

(de jure) Standard

RFC733

< 1979

Client/Server

Laurel / Xerox PARC

UA & MTA on different machines

System

http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/xerox/alto/stanford/StanfordAltoUsersGuideSep80.pdf p. 131

< 1979

Graphical UI

Laurel / Xerox PARC

 

User

Auto-reply

Delivermail / E. Allman, Berkeley

Vacation notification, etc.

User / System ?

Auto-alias

.forward / Delivermail / E. Allman, Berkeley

Forward to alternate mailbo

System ?

Multi-standard Interconnect

(arpanet/uucp) / Delivermail / E. Allman, Berkeley ?

Linking services with different mail technologies

System

Newsletter

EMMS

Industry trade periodical

Commercial

1978

Active content

J. Vittal Content that executes on receiver's system User

First demonstration

1982

Transfer Standard

J. Postel

SMTP - Internet protocol for relaying mail {but really, shouldn't FTP, 1972 get credit for this? /d}

Standard

RFC821

1982

Message Standard

D. Crocker

RFC822 - Internet-capable standard for object - domain names {and shouldn't RFC733 get credit for this? /d}

Standard

RFC822

Department product

Enterprise-oriented group messaging (w/DB)

Commercial

Delivery confirmation

DSN? / Internet?

Automatic confirmation of delivery into mailbox

Standard

Reading confirmation

MDN / Internet

Automatic confirmation of processing by recipient

Standard

1985?

Commercial Interconnect

MCI Mail?

Commercial

Enterprise Interconnect

MCI Mail?

Commercial

Client/Server Standard

POP / M. Rose

Common protocol for UA/MTA exchange

Standard

1987?

Seamless Addressing

(possibly not a technical innovation?)

Unified addressing across heterogeneous mail services

System

Seamless Routing

MX / Partridge

Transparent off-net and gatewayed relaying

System

1986

Unification of Independent Services

Dick Edmiston, CSNET; M. Horton, UUCP; J. Feinler, SRI

Administrative merge of addressing, routing and object for CSNet, Bitnet, Usenet, Internet

System ?

?

Attachment ad hoc

M. Horton

Common encoding for attachment-like data

User ?

Attachment syntax

Andrew?

Multi-media construct built in

User

Message confidentiality

PGP?

Message authentication

PGP?

Address Book

Eudora?

Stored addresses for aiding message creation

User

International Characters

Support of alternative character sets

User

Common attachments & alternate characters

MIME / N. Borenstein, N. Freed

Single basis for multi-media and non-ASCII text.

Standard