Email Timeline

• based on History of Email and other articles
  1961. MIT's Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) on an IBM 7090, for the first time multiple users could log into a central system from remote terminals, and store and share files on the central disk. From 1965 each user's messages would be added to a local file called "MAIL BOX", which would have a "private" mode so that only the owner could read or delete messages.
  1962. IBM's Administrative Terminal System on IBM 1440 and 1460 was able to exchange messages between terminals. Followed by wide usage on IBM's System/360 (ATS/360) in 1968, and OFS (Office Vision) in 1974.
  1971. SNDMSG, a local inter-user mail program developed by Ray Tomlinson, incorporating the experimental file transfer program, CPYNET, allowed the first networked electronic mail over the ARPANET (the early Internet). The addresses contained the '@' character as a separator between local part and host. All host names were stored in a text file managed by Jon Postel (1943-1998), a researcher at UCLA (University California Los Angeles) who moved to USC (University Southern California) in Los Angeles in 1977. In 1979 the ARPANET launched delivermail, followed by sendmail.
  1972. UNIX, an operating system designed by Bell Telecommunications, developed the MAIL program on a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) computer. It was written using the now ubiquitous C language (a fore-runner of C++ and Java) and the 7 bit ASCII encoding system.

        Larry Breed at STSC in Maryland launched APL Mailbox using APL (A programming language) designed on an IBM System/360.

  1978. Compuserve in Columbus Ohio offered electronic mail, designed primarily for intraoffice memos, as part of their corporate Infoplex service on a DEC (Digital Equipment) PDP-10. In 1979 launched a dialup service labelled MicroNET. After its success selling otherwise under-utilized after-hours time to Radio Shack customers, the system was opened to the general public. H&R Block bought the company in 1980 and aggressively advertised the service, rebranding it as EMAIL.

        Berkeley Network in California released the Mail client for Unix written by Kurt Shoens on their DEC PDP-11 computer and distributed with the Second Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It included support for aliases and distribution lists, forwarding, formatting messages, and accessing different mailboxes.

        Computerized Bulletin Board System (CBBS) became a public dial-up BBS for home-built computers initially on the Intel 8080 CPU running the CP/M operating system.

  1979. MH Message Handling System developed on a RAND Corporation computer providing several tools for managing electronic mail on Unix.
  1980. Minitel experimental service launched in France, enabled users to have a mail box over videotex (TV or dumb terminal). Introduced commercially throughout France in 1982 using X.25 protocols published in 1976 by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in Switzerland. Written by the French Government PTT (Postal, Telegraph, Telephone) service.

        Wang Laboratories introduced its Integrated Information Systems line on its minicomputers, incorporating the ability to attach digitised voice messages.

  1981. IBM PROFS, the predecessor of OfficeVision/VM, was released, incorporating a centralised virtual machine to manage mail transfer between individuals.

        BITNET (Because It's There Network) launched at the City University of New York (CUNY) and Yale University, providing electronic mail services for educational institutions. It was based on the IBM VNET email system..

  1982. Hewlett Packard launch HPMAIL, later developed into HP DeskManager.

        Digital Equipment Corporation launch ALL-IN-1, an office automation system including functionality in electronic messaging.

  1983. Internet SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol) released as the standard for all Internet email transmission from sender (Mail User Agent) or MUA, via Mail Transport Agent(s) or MTA, to Mail Delivery Agent or MDA. POP (Post Office Protocol) for downloading the email followed in 1984, and IMAP (Protocol for retaining the email on a centralized server) in 1986. The Internet was still unavailable however for commercial use.

        MCI Mail was a custom software application developed for MCI Communications Corporation by DEC (Digital Equipment Corp) to run on their VAX-11/780 superminicomputers and HP-3000 minicomputers coupled with HP Laser printers. MCI Mail also allowed subscribers to send regular postal mail (overnight) to non-subscribers. MCI Mail became (finally) the first commercial public email service to cut across to the Internet, in 1989. See below.

  1984. FidoNet was released, creating a network of connected email-accepting and -forwarding bulletin boards on home computer systems worlwide. IBM PCs running DOS could link with FidoNet for email and shared bulletin board posting.

        Prestel Mailbox service launched by the UK Post Office Telecommunications as Videotex that ran on TV and dumb terminals using X.25 protocols and offered private messaging. Launched in 1985 by Telecom Australia as Viatel. Later renamed as Discovery 40 (for 40 character screens) and Discovery 80 (for 80 character screens), it only ever ran over dialup and was retired by Telstra ca 1993.

        X.400 was published as a suite of ITU-T recommendations that defined the ITU-T Message Handling System (MHS). Mandated for government use in 1988 under GOSIP particularly (and briefly) in the UK, Canada, and Australia. Promoted by major vendors (e.g. Microsoft) in 1989.

  1988. Vinton Cerf arranged for the connection of MCI Mail to the NSFNET using the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), becoming the first sanctioned commercial use of the Internet. Shortly thereafter, in 1989, the Compuserve mail system connected to the NSFNET over the Ohio State University network.
  1993. The large network service providers America Online (AOL) and Delphi started to connect their proprietary email systems for PCs and other home computers to the Internet, beginning the large scale adoption of Internet email as a global standard.

Microsoft
Microsoft Mail 3.x was a LAN server product released in 1992 capable of supporting 10 (or so) PCs maximum. However, on both Windows and IBM's OS/2, the client software was built around an early version of MAPI called MAPI 0, loosely based on the X.400 standard mentioned earlier. It could in theory enable that client to talk to any mail server by replacing the MAPI DLL (Dynamic Link Library) with a fully compliant DLL for the appropriate system.

• Exchange connections to "foreign mail systems" were thus made possible by gateways. Microsoft Mail shipped gateways to PROFS and SNADS as employed on IBM's Office Vision, SMTP as used on the Internet, X.400 over X.25 set up by the ITU-T in Geneva, Novell's Message Handling System (MHS), MCI Mail, AT&T Mail, and others. Many companies running these gateways quickly replaced them with Microsoft Exchange Server connectors once Microsoft Exchange 4.0 was shipped in March 1996.

  In particular an early part of a migration from Microsoft Mail to Microsoft Exchange included replacing the Microsoft Mail Gateway to SMTP with the Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Connector, later renamed the Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service.

  The original Windows 95 "Inbox" client in 1995 used MAPI but it was also called "Microsoft Exchange". A stripped-down version of this Exchange Client (having no support for Exchange Server) was released as Windows Messaging to avoid confusion, and was then included with Windows 95 OSR2, Windows 98, and Windows NT 4. It was then discontinued because of Microsoft's move to email standards such as SMTP, IMAP, and POP3, all of which Outlook Express supported better than Windows Messaging.

• Microsoft Internet Mail and News, Outlook, and Outlook Express
  Its Version 1.0 was released in 1996 following the Internet Explorer 3 release. This add-on preceded an Internet Mail profile for Microsoft Exchange 4.0 bundled in Windows 95 that year. Version 2.0 was released at the end of 1996. Internet Mail and News handled only plain text and rich text (RTF) email, lacking HTML email.

  Microsoft Exchange Server up to version 5.0 (May 97) came bundled with Microsoft Exchange Client as its email client. Note, when Microsoft Outlook 97 was released in January 97, Exchange Client 5.0 was still in development, it was released later in May 97 as part of Exchange Server 5.0, primarily because Outlook 97 was only available for Windows. Later in Exchange Server 5.5 (released in Nov 97) Exchange Client was removed and Microsoft Outlook was made the only Exchange client as it was now available for Apple, and others.

  In October 1997 the desktop application was changed and renamed as Outlook Express and bundled with Internet Explorer 4. The Windows executable file for Outlook Express, msimn.exe MS Internet Mail News, is a holdover from that Internet Mail and News era. Like Internet Explorer 4, Outlook Express 4 can run on Apple Mac System 7, OS 8, and OS 9.

Netscape
At the same time, Netscape released Netscape Communicator in 1997 with its email client, renamed as Netscape Messenger.

Launch of Hotmail
Hotmail service was founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith, and was one of the first webmail services on the Internet along with Four11's RocketMail (later Yahoo! Mail). Hotmail was commercially launched on July 4, 1996, symbolizing "freedom" from ISP-based email and the ability to access a user's inbox from anywhere in the world.

The limit for free storage was 2 MB. Hotmail was initially backed by venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. By December 1997, it reported more than 8½ million subscribers. Hotmail initially ran under the Solaris operating system for mail services and Apache web server software under FreeBSD Unix for web services, before being partly converted to Microsoft's products, using Windows Services for UNIX in the migration path.

Hotmail was then sold to Microsoft in December 1997 for a reported $400 million, and it joined the MSN group of services. Hotmail quickly rose in popularity as it was localized for different markets around the globe, and became the world's largest webmail service with more than 30 million active members, reported in February 1999. As mentioned before, Hotmail as a service ran on a mixture of FreeBSD and Solaris operating systems

Other Developments
Yahoo Mail was launched in 1997 as a webmail client, an alternative to Hotmail

Apple Mail was launched in 2001 as part of Mac OS X, an email client that was a free alternative to running Microsoft Office (Outlook and Outlook Express) on the Apple Mac.

Mozilla Thunderbird was launched in 2004, a free and open-source email client that ran on the desktop.

Gmail was launched in 2004, a webmail client, another alternative to Hotmail and Yahoo.

Lastly, a comment about Australia and sending email back in 1990.
An alternative to SMTP for sending email, as mentioned earlier, was x.400 that was developed in the 1980s in Geneva by the ITU-T. It was employed by Microsoft initially.

In Australia in 1990, we thus saw two interim Internet domains otc.au and telememo.au set up to support an email gateway to the X.400 mail service provided by what was then OTC (Overseas Telecommunications Commission).

** End of Page

Go Top