[math-fun] Herstory of email?!?
There's a real howler going on on Huffingtonpost.com about the history of email. An MIT professor (!) named Deborah Nightingale claims that email was invented in 1978. Perhaps she hasn't talked with anyone at MIT/Stanford/CMU/BBN/Xerox/IBM/DEC/BellLabs/... about this? The Boy Who Invented Email -- History of Email http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-weber/the-history-of-email-boy-who-inven...
There's a real howler going on on Huffingtonpost.com about the history of email. An MIT professor (!) named Deborah Nightingale claims that email was invented in 1978. Perhaps she hasn't talked with anyone at MIT/Stanford/CMU/BBN/Xerox/IBM/DEC/BellLabs/... about this?
Her five-myths article does cite a variety of people and documents from those places. I find the result very irritating. When this first appeared on Dave Farber's IP list a few days ago, it seemed to claim that the invention was implementing the header format of office memos. I looked at my files and first find that format in messages from 1976. As I read Nighengale's piece, it seems the issue is the use of the word ``email.'' Another look at my files fails to find anything called email before the 1990s; prior to that, I just called it ``mail'' and largely still do. There are times when a development incorporates all the pieces so that later systems all look like that and less like anything earlier. Prior to this, I had never heard of V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai and I wonder what influence his email system system had on the main stream of development. Whit
I also find this very irritating. When I was at BB&N in 1971 we had a primitive form of email, which, I believe, was just called messages. When I first worked at IBM Yorktown in the summer of 1977 that had a rather well-developed email system as part of their internal VNET. And of course there's usenet (I don't remember when this first started). Victor On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 4:08 PM, Whitfield Diffie <whitfield.diffie@gmail.com
wrote:
There's a real howler going on on Huffingtonpost.com about the history of email. An MIT professor (!) named Deborah Nightingale claims that email was invented in 1978. Perhaps she hasn't talked with anyone at MIT/Stanford/CMU/BBN/Xerox/IBM/DEC/BellLabs/... about this?
Her five-myths article does cite a variety of people and documents from those places. I find the result very irritating. When this first appeared on Dave Farber's IP list a few days ago, it seemed to claim that the invention was implementing the header format of office memos. I looked at my files and first find that format in messages from 1976. As I read Nighengale's piece, it seems the issue is the use of the word ``email.'' Another look at my files fails to find anything called email before the 1990s; prior to that, I just called it ``mail'' and largely still do.
There are times when a development incorporates all the pieces so that later systems all look like that and less like anything earlier. Prior to this, I had never heard of V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai and I wonder what influence his email system system had on the main stream of development.
Whit
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Tom Van Vleck wrote this: http://www.multicians.org/thvv/mail-history.html Knowing Tom, I'm sure it's accurate. The key paragraph regarding this instance of the invention of e-mail is: My colleague Noel Morris and I were new members of the MIT sponsored research staff in spring 1965, working for the Political Science department. When we read the PSN document about the proposed CTSS MAIL command, we asked "where is it?" and were told there was nobody available to write it. Noel and I wrote a version of MAIL for CTSS in the summer of 1965. Noel saw how to use the features of the new CTSS file system to send the messages, and I wrote the actual code that interfaced with the user. (We made a few changes from the proposal during the course of implementation: e.g. to read one's mail, users just used the PRINT command instead of a special argument to MAIL.) I don't know if there was an earlier invention, but of course there might have been. Regards, Jon On Sep 3, 2014, at 2:03 PM, Victor Miller <victorsmiller@gmail.com> wrote:
I also find this very irritating. When I was at BB&N in 1971 we had a primitive form of email, which, I believe, was just called messages. When I first worked at IBM Yorktown in the summer of 1977 that had a rather well-developed email system as part of their internal VNET. And of course there's usenet (I don't remember when this first started).
Victor
On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 4:08 PM, Whitfield Diffie <whitfield.diffie@gmail.com
wrote:
There's a real howler going on on Huffingtonpost.com about the history of email. An MIT professor (!) named Deborah Nightingale claims that email was invented in 1978. Perhaps she hasn't talked with anyone at MIT/Stanford/CMU/BBN/Xerox/IBM/DEC/BellLabs/... about this?
Her five-myths article does cite a variety of people and documents from those places. I find the result very irritating. When this first appeared on Dave Farber's IP list a few days ago, it seemed to claim that the invention was implementing the header format of office memos. I looked at my files and first find that format in messages from 1976. As I read Nighengale's piece, it seems the issue is the use of the word ``email.'' Another look at my files fails to find anything called email before the 1990s; prior to that, I just called it ``mail'' and largely still do.
There are times when a development incorporates all the pieces so that later systems all look like that and less like anything earlier. Prior to this, I had never heard of V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai and I wonder what influence his email system system had on the main stream of development.
Whit
Anyone who lived through those nascent technology times would know how often things were invented independently, often by young people. And the people who used EMAIL software thought it was unique and wonderful, and they retained their memories and through all the intervening time believed it was the first messaging system to have the features that we associate with mail handling program now. Why is that so offensive? Like no one ever got OUR-story confused? C'mon, guys, why not enjoy hearing about the kid who patented EMAIL while even you oldtimers were pushing 30? Is that not way cool? Hilarie
When I first worked at IBM Yorktown in the summer of 1977 that had a rather well-developed email system as part of their internal VNET.
I wonder if there is documentation on that; IBM was rather good about such things. In common with patent cases, I have been working on, the claims for what V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai ``invented'' sound like a perfectly fine final project report but do not suggest real invention. For some reason, however, this nags at me and I am going to worry at it a little more. There seem to be several elements The resemblance to and syntax of inter-office memos. I don't know how to weigh the difference between those and either the conventions of social mail or those of business correspondence. I don't think the distance has much to do with it. An interoffice memo at IBM could go across the country. Organizational diversity may have more.to do with it. Would you have sent a memo in the ``memo format'' to another organization; I am not sure. Envelopes seem irrelevant. The two sorts --- glue shut postal envelopes and tie-shut interoffice envelopes seem to have much the same information. The use of the term ``email'' This may have something to it but I think just calling it ``mail'' recognized its implementation of the paper forms. An inbox and folders I am not sure this is part of the interoffice-mail standard. I would think that each person managed his desk differently in terms of how (paper mail) of any kind was handled. The atsign Some notation for <person> at <organization> is needed. In interdepartmental mail this was usually in the form Doyle, R14. For inter-company mail it used multiple lines and gave a full street address. I don't see anything very deep here. The essential questions are: Was V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai the first person to weave all the elements we now associate with email together. If so, was his implementation influential on RFP 2822 or widely used mail implementations. What have I missed? Whit And of course
there's usenet (I don't remember when this first started).
Victor
On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 4:08 PM, Whitfield Diffie <whitfield.diffie@gmail.com
wrote:
There's a real howler going on on Huffingtonpost.com about the history of email. An MIT professor (!) named Deborah Nightingale claims that email was invented in 1978. Perhaps she hasn't talked with anyone at MIT/Stanford/CMU/BBN/Xerox/IBM/DEC/BellLabs/... about this?
Her five-myths article does cite a variety of people and documents from those places. I find the result very irritating. When this first appeared on Dave Farber's IP list a few days ago, it seemed to claim that the invention was implementing the header format of office memos. I looked at my files and first find that format in messages from 1976. As I read Nighengale's piece, it seems the issue is the use of the word ``email.'' Another look at my files fails to find anything called email before the 1990s; prior to that, I just called it ``mail'' and largely still do.
There are times when a development incorporates all the pieces so that later systems all look like that and less like anything earlier. Prior to this, I had never heard of V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai and I wonder what influence his email system system had on the main stream of development.
Whit
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This thread reminds me of this recent interesting talk by Don Knuth, which is easily googleable if you'd like to watch it Let's Not Dumb Down the History of Computer Science Abstract For many years the history of computer science was presented in a way that was useful to computer scientists. But nowadays almost all technical content is excised; historians are concentrating rather on issues like how computer scientists have been able to get funding for their projects, and/or how much their work has influenced Wall Street. We no longer are told what ideas were actually discovered, nor how they were discovered, nor why they are great ideas. We only get a scorecard. Similar trends are occurring with respect to other sciences. Historians generally no prefer "external history" to "internal history", so that they can write stories that appeal to readers with almost no expertise. Historians of mathematics have thankfully been resisting such temptations. In this talk the speaker will explain why he is so grateful for the continued excellence of papers on mathematical history, and he will make a plea for historians of computer science to get back on track. On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 9:16 PM, Whitfield Diffie <whitfield.diffie@gmail.com
wrote:
When I first worked at IBM Yorktown in the summer of 1977 that had a rather well-developed email system as part of their internal VNET.
I wonder if there is documentation on that; IBM was rather good about such things.
In common with patent cases, I have been working on, the claims for what V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai ``invented'' sound like a perfectly fine final project report but do not suggest real invention. For some reason, however, this nags at me and I am going to worry at it a little more.
There seem to be several elements
The resemblance to and syntax of inter-office memos.
I don't know how to weigh the difference between those and either the conventions of social mail or those of business correspondence. I don't think the distance has much to do with it. An interoffice memo at IBM could go across the country. Organizational diversity may have more.to do with it. Would you have sent a memo in the ``memo format'' to another organization; I am not sure.
Envelopes seem irrelevant. The two sorts --- glue shut postal envelopes and tie-shut interoffice envelopes seem to have much the same information.
The use of the term ``email''
This may have something to it but I think just calling it ``mail'' recognized its implementation of the paper forms.
An inbox and folders
I am not sure this is part of the interoffice-mail standard. I would think that each person managed his desk differently in terms of how (paper mail) of any kind was handled.
The atsign
Some notation for <person> at <organization> is needed. In interdepartmental mail this was usually in the form Doyle, R14. For inter-company mail it used multiple lines and gave a full street address. I don't see anything very deep here.
The essential questions are:
Was V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai the first person to weave all the elements we now associate with email together. If so, was his implementation influential on RFP 2822 or widely used mail implementations.
What have I missed?
Whit
And of course
there's usenet (I don't remember when this first started).
Victor
On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 4:08 PM, Whitfield Diffie < whitfield.diffie@gmail.com
wrote:
There's a real howler going on on Huffingtonpost.com about the history of email. An MIT professor (!) named Deborah Nightingale claims that email was invented in 1978. Perhaps she hasn't talked with anyone at MIT/Stanford/CMU/BBN/Xerox/IBM/DEC/BellLabs/... about this?
Her five-myths article does cite a variety of people and documents from those places. I find the result very irritating. When this first appeared on Dave Farber's IP list a few days ago, it seemed to claim that the invention was implementing the header format of office memos. I looked at my files and first find that format in messages from 1976. As I read Nighengale's piece, it seems the issue is the use of the word ``email.'' Another look at my files fails to find anything called email before the 1990s; prior to that, I just called it ``mail'' and largely still do.
There are times when a development incorporates all the pieces so that later systems all look like that and less like anything earlier. Prior to this, I had never heard of V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai and I wonder what influence his email system system had on the main stream of development.
Whit
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-- Thane Plambeck tplambeck@gmail.com http://counterwave.com/
There's the UNIX mail system mh, and that was the first system that I saw that was "full featured". I believe it was available in the timeframe we are discussing. RFC733, written in 1977, the predecessor to RFC822, is highly relevant. Hilarie
participants (6)
-
Henry Baker -
Hilarie Orman -
Jon Ziegler -
Thane Plambeck -
Victor Miller -
Whitfield Diffie