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Happy Birthday! Email Is 30 Years Old

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the don't-trust-anyone-over-30-named-sircam dept.

pgrote writes: "Happy Birthday Email! It turns 30 and Yahoo! News has an article here. Of course, they have the @ sign listed as a + sign. There is an interesting look at the history here. Two neat things about this: 1) The creator can't remember the first message, but he knows it was in ALL CAPS and 2) Can you imagine your life without email now?"

4 of 383 comments (clear)

  1. the new yardstick by digitalmuse · · Score: 5, Informative

    hmmm, e-mail is older than I am (26yrs). and I measure myself through the things I've seen. I remember Ronald Regan as a very young child. I recall my parent's last throes of back-to-the-land/cold-war self-sufficency. I was astounded as the first Space Shuttle launch took us around the earth and flew us back home on wings. I was glued to the TVs when the Challenger exploded. I was there when faxes were pasted hourly on the walls of Boston's china-town as Tienamen square unfolded.
    I lost friends in an act of terrorism that the world had never seen before, or even believed possible outside of cheap paperback fiction.
    I have done all these things at a distance, I have made friends and effected change on continents that I may never visit.
    I have dipped my toes in the greater waters of mankind.
    All this in less than 30 years.

    How will my children look back when they are my age?
    Will they remember a world before the arrival of the meta-verse that allows them to interact around the world, regardless of language, race, time, or class?
    Will they look back with sepia-toned memories of the good-old days before corporate structures replaced government?
    Might they think of us with scorn, as those who poisoned the earth and water that they inherited?
    Or will they think of us as the generation that first tasted this fruit of true communication, and were alternately torn and brought together by it.
    pioneers in a digital age where the hot metal was still fluid and a maleable medium, filling gaps and voids in the mold of society.
    what will someone say about us in 30 years.
    what do we want to leave as our legacy for our children,
    food for thought.

    --
    "If I wanted your input on my pet project, I'd stick my hand up your ass and use you like a sock-puppet." - Muse
  2. Knuth by srichman · · Score: 5, Informative

    Don Knuth weighs in on this at the bottom of this page.

  3. Bit of email history by Simm0 · · Score: 4, Informative
    Interesting how the @ symbol wasn't added till a year later.

    1970
    Ray Tomlinson of BBN invents email program to send messages across a distributed network. The original program was derived from two others: an intra-machine email program (SENDMSG) and an experimental file transfer program (CPYNET)

    1972
    Ray Tomlinson (BBN) modifies email program for ARPANET where it becomes a quick hit. The @ sign was chosen from the punctuation keys on Tomlinson's Model 33 Teletype for its "at" meaning (March)


  4. E-Mail is not 30 years old today. by Bowie+J.+Poag · · Score: 5, Informative



    E-Mail is more than 30 years old. Doug Englebart's NLS system was doing email for years prior to '71, and infact, demonstrated it publically in '68.

    Get your facts straight, gang.

    Cheers,

    --
    Bowie J. Poag