THE HISTORY OF EMAIL
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I made this site for my science expo project so people
could read about how email works and what it is all about. |
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HISTORY
The first email was sent more than 30 years ago, in 1971.
Many professors and students at universities, as well as government researchers,
started using email in the late 1970's and 1980's. The introduction
of the "world wide web" in the early 1990's led to (or at least coincided
with) the explosive growth of email. This presentation explains some
of the history of email. |
Who sent the first Email?
If "email" just means an electronic message, then the first one was
Morse's "What hath God wrought?" telegram on May 24, 1844. An updated
version, a voice (phone) message, was first sent electrically on March
10, 1876 with Bell's famous words, "Mr. Watson, come here; I want you."
But when people talk about email, they usually mean short messages they
type on a computer and send over a network (the Internet) to other people,
far or near. That first happened in 1971.
In 1971, there WAS such a thing as a computer mailbox. It was
simply your text file that other users on the same machine could add stuff
to the bottom of. It was kind of a long running note that other people
could add to, but only the owner could clear. It was simple, and
worked fine on one machine.
At this time, an engineer named Ray Tomlinson was working writing on
a file transfer program that would allow files to be transferred BETWEEN
machines. He figured out that his program could easily also add something
to someone's mailbox file - on another machine! To identify the users
on different machines, he decided to use the "@" symbol, mostly because
it made sense. First, they were "at" that machine. Also, two
people on two different machines might pick the same mailbox file name,
but if their address had a last name too (so to speak), then addresses
would always be unique. He tried sending a couple of messages to
his own mailboxes at different machines. It worked, and real across-the-network
email was born.
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Dateline Earth, February 25, 2003
According to Nielsen Net Ratings, more than half a billion people have
internet access. The current estimate is 580 million, which is 17
million more than in September 2002. In Europe, the largest "at-home
Internet populations" are Germany, the UK, and Italy (35.6 million, 29
million, and 22.7 million respectively.)
Where are the World's Internet Users From?
29% are in the US,
23% are in Europe,
13% are in Asian-Pacific countries
02% are in Latin America
(I guess the other 33% must be in Australia and New Zealand, Canada,
the Antarctic and Africa.)
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© 2003 Jacky Such
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