In computer news this week, 10/17/2001

Email is 30 years old, Winnie the Pooh is 75

The old internet in its earliest days was known as the Arpanet,(Advanced Research Projects Agency network) and was a plan by the government to be able to link key agencies in a communications ring in the event of nuclear attack.

In 1969, a company named BBN technologies was charged with the task of implementing this early version of the internet, and also of devising all the communications protocols. Using UCLA as their home base, a team of scientists began creating the hardware and software to enable agencies to exchange both datafiles, and interagency mail and communications.

They began test communications with UCSB and the University of Utah, and by 1972 the network had grown to 13 sites. Amazingly the system worked fairly well from the start, after solving numerous hardware bugs in almost prehistoric computer hardware, and working with very early software.

In 1971, Ray Tomlinson, a Scientist at BBN, was already well known for his work on early mail and file transfer programs, but he became better known for a single decision he made while hacking those programs. Tomlinson combined the file transfer protocols of one program with the send and receive message capabilities of two others to create the first electronic email program. The early seventies preceded the advent of the personal computer, so most computers were refrigerator-sized machines that were shared by several people at a site. To address email to an individual user on the computer, Tomlinson needed to indicate both the machine (usually named for the host institution) and the particular user for whom the message was intended, and find a way to separate the two in the address.

Tomlinson looked down at the keyboard he was using, a Teletype. He needed a character that would not appear in any host or individual name. In the second row, on the left side of the keyboard he spotted the perfect solution. The @ sign didn't appear in names, so there would be no confusion about where the separation between login name and host name occurred. The character also had the advantage of meaning "at" the designated institution. It was a brilliant decision that Tomlinson calls "obvious."

In late 1971, Tomlinson sent the first message between two machines that were side-by-side in his Cambridge, MA lab. The first email message he sent out of the lab was to the rest of his group announcing the existence of network email and explaining how to use it, including the use of the @ sign to separate the user's name from the host computer name.

Tomlinson says he invented email, "Mostly because it seemed like a neat idea." No one was asking for email; he recognized a possibility and made it real.

This and further information can be found at www.bbn.com.

Today email is 2nd only to voice telephone transmission as the primary mode of communication for North American consumers.

So happy birthday to email, and to Winnie the Pooh. Had to sneak that Pooh thing in or he'd get mad.

For Raw Bytes, This is Frank Delaney

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