History of Internet Email
The forerunner of the Internet (known as ARPANET) was originally created to allow remote users to make use of scarce computer resources. In its earliest form it connected just four sites, later increased to 19 across the USA. Although passing electronic messages from user to user on the same computer was not new passing them across the country was and email became an unexpected a major use of the new network.

However software was developed in an ad hoc fashion dependent on individual operating systems and originally used FTP (File Transfer Protocol). In 1972 the form of the email address with the @ sign was invented by Ray Tomlinson who also wrote the early email programs. RFC 680 appeared in 1975 and set of the process of standardisation of email protocols with RFC 733 a major landmark.

Commercial exploitation of email started to happen when MCI employed Vint Cerf (designer of the TCP/IP protocol which underlies the Internets operation) to design and implement MCI mail for them in 1983. MCI was very successful in its own way but did not really conform to Internet email addresses. It used numbers for the user part of the address and did not support multiple domains (the DNS was formalised and adopted in 1986). Similarly the main commercial dialup network – Compuserve also used non standard addresses (and did not use TCP/IP). In both cases it became possible to send messages across the Internet with the introduction of gateways – computers that took care of the incompatibilities. MCI mail connected in 1988, Compuserve in 1989 and surprisingly AOL only connected to the Internet mail system in 1993.

Personal Computers Arrive
Of course the Internet preceded the introduction of personal computers so prior to that mail programs were running on the time sharing main frame or mini computer. Once a computer per user became commonplace (in the Internet’s case with the introduction of SUN workstations) and then in the 1980’s with Apple and IBM personal computers, the dynamic changed significantly – the email system then became one of software running on computers permanently on the Internet which stored email for users and took care of sending it to its destination (mail server) and software running on the individual users computer which communicated with the mail server). The email client program took care of downloading the stored email and then allowed the user to organise it. One of the earliest client programs was Eudora released in 1989. Eudora was developed for the Macintosh by Steve Dorner at the University of Illinois, where Mosaic (the first web browser) was also eventually developed. Commercial exploitation started in 1991/1992 when a Windows version was also released.

Attachments
One of the most significant advances with email came when it was possible to attach files to the message rather than just send text. This kind of capability started to become possible in 1988 - 1992 when the problem was first turned into protocols but it was 1996 before RFC 2045 finally tied things down as the MIME protocol (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension). This allowed users to send around word processed documents, spreadsheets and graphics and many other formats. Now email was a true communications tool for the increasing numbers of people who relied on computers for work and their lives in general.

However you still needed to be at your desk to get your email so the next step (1995) was allowing web browser access to the mail on the server (webmail). Now you could get at your email on anybody’s computer or in an Internet café anywhere in the world. Webmail programs varied in sophistication and often could not really cope with attachments. The final step in the ubiquity of email was to make it possible to receive email on portable computing devices via the mobile phone network or now with wireless networks direct to the users laptop computer or PDA (personal digital assistant). So nowadays email can be sent and received from virtually anywhere if required.

Collaboration
Email is developing further as a collaboration tool with shared resources such as calendars being made available to work groups. Of course it is not all good news – SPAM interferes with users enjoyment of email (and uses up net resources) and the ability to send out viruses via email makes all users cautious. However email traffic continues to grow very rapidly and there is no reason not to expect this to continue.

Links:  

A history of Internet email by Dave Crocker: www.livinginternet.com

A history of SPAM: www.templetons.com

A book!!!:

Hafner, K and Lyon, M (2003) Where wizards stay up late, Simon & Schuster UK Ltd: London