1.2 History of the emergence and development of email

The emergence of email can be traced back to 1965, when Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) employees Noel Morris and Tom Van Vleck wrote the MAIL program for the CTSS (Compatible Time-Sharing System) operating system installed on the IBM 7090/7094 computer.

The general development of e-mail was driven by the development of local user interaction on multi-user systems. Users could, using the mail program (or its equivalent), send messages to each other within the same mainframe (computer). The next step was to be able to forward a message to a user on another machine - this was done by specifying the machine name and the username on the machine. The address could be written as foo!joe (user joe on computer foo). The third step in the development of e-mail occurred with the advent of sending letters through a third computer. In the case of using UUCP, the user's address included a route to the user through several intermediate machines (for example, gate1!gate2!foo!joe - a letter for joe through the gate1 machine, gate2 to the foo machine). The disadvantage of this addressing was that the sender (or the administrator of the machine on which the sender was working) needed to know the exact path to the recipient's machine.

After the advent of the distributed global name system DNS, domain names began to be used to indicate the address - [email protected]- user user on the example.com machine. At the same time, a rethinking of the concept of “on a machine” was taking place: dedicated servers began to be used for mail, to which ordinary users (only administrators) did not have access, and users worked on their machines, while mail came not to the users’ work machines, but to the mailbox. a server from where users received their mail using various network protocols (among the currently common ones are POP3, IMAP, MAPI, web interfaces). Simultaneously with the advent of DNS, a system for reserving mail delivery routes was thought out, and the domain name in the mailing address ceased to be the name of a specific computer and became simply an email domain, for the maintenance of which many servers (possibly physically located on different continents and in different organizations) could be responsible.

In addition, there were (and still exist) other e-mail systems, such as Netmail on the FidoNET network, X.400 on X.25 networks. Access to them from the Internet and back is carried out through a mail gateway. To route mail in X.25 networks, the DNS provides a special resource record with the appropriate name X25 (code 19).

1.3 Advantages and features of email

E-mail turned out to be in many ways more convenient than regular, “paper” mail. Not to mention the fact that you don't have to get up from your computer and go to your mailbox to receive or send a letter. Besides:

In most cases, a message is delivered by email much faster than by regular mail;

It costs less;

To send a letter to several recipients, you do not need to print it in many copies; you just need to enter the text into the computer once;

It is more convenient to store a large number of letters in a file on a disk than in a desk drawer;

It’s easier to search in the file;

And finally, paper is saved.

According to the most conservative estimates, more than 50 million people in the world use e-mail services. In general, email traffic (SMTP protocol) takes up only 3.7% of the total network traffic. Its popularity is explained both by pressing requirements and by the fact that most connections are “Dial-Up” class connections (via a modem).

E-mail makes it possible to send messages, receive them in your email inbox, respond to letters from correspondents automatically using their addresses based on their letters, send copies of a letter to several recipients at once, forward a received letter to another address, use instead of addresses (numeric or domain names) logical names, create several mailbox subsections for various types of correspondence, include text files in letters, use the “mail reflector” system to conduct discussions with a group of your correspondents, etc. From the Internet you can send mail to adjacent networks if you know the address of the corresponding gateway, the format of its requests and the address on the network.

When using e-mail, due to its efficiency, you may get the feeling of a telephone connection, but you should always be aware that this is still mail. All communications are written and therefore almost documented, so the etiquette of regular correspondence should be followed. In addition, you should remember that e-mail does not have the same degree of privacy as regular mail, so unless you use additional means of encrypting messages, you should not write anything in e-mail that you would not want to see displayed. for everyone to see. Anonymity is also excluded: the source can be traced without difficulty. Although email can be considered a special case of file transfer, it has a number of features that are not common in standard file transfer procedures. First, the sender and recipient are almost always people, not machines. This means that an email system consists of two distinct but closely interrelated parts: one for human interaction (e.g., composing, editing, reading messages), and the other for message transmission (e.g., sending to lists, facilitating transmission).

Another difference between e-mail and general-purpose file transfer media is that mail messages are clearly structured documents. In many systems, each message is accompanied by a large number of additional fields. These include the name and address of the sender, the name and address of the recipient, the date and time the letter was sent, the list of people to whom a copy of the letter was sent, the level of significance, the degree of secrecy, and much more.

USENET is a network of information servers. There are about 200,000 conferences on Usenet (this is a directory where messages on a certain topic flock), and almost every topic has its own group. The servers constantly exchange information with each other, resulting in natural news updates.

The user searches for information on the INTERNET either for some purpose or simply looks around to know what is available. There is a wealth of information available on the INTERNET, so you can spend a huge amount of time simply going from one site to another and determining what information is available. The emergence of such information search management tools as GOPHER and WWW had an explosion effect. GOPHER uses a menu system to allow users to select information. WWW uses the web metaphor because... this system allows you to move freely within a system built on the basis of hypertext (HTTP).

In order to be able to exchange letters by e-mail, the user must become a client of one of the computer networks. Just like in telephone networks, clients of computer networks are called subscribers.

For each subscriber, a memory area is allocated on one of the network computers - an electronic mailbox.

Access to this memory area is carried out using the address that is provided to the subscriber and a password that the subscriber comes up with himself. The password is known only to the subscriber and the network computer. Having become a subscriber to a computer network and receiving the address of his mailbox, the user can tell his friends and acquaintances. Each email subscriber can, through his computer and modem, send a letter to any other subscriber, indicating his postal address in the message. But this can only be done by providing the computer network with your email address and password (as proof that this is really a subscriber).

All letters arriving at a certain email address are recorded in the memory area of ​​the network computer allocated for it.

A network computer containing subscriber mailboxes is called a host computer.

There are two main types of email. The first method, called off-line (out of line, out of communication, pronounced: offline), is that during each communication session between the subscriber’s computer and the network computer, letters are exchanged automatically: all pre-prepared letters from the subscriber are transferred to the network computer, and all letters received at the subscriber’s address are transferred to his computer. The name off-line emphasizes the fact that the process of familiarizing with letters and reading them occurs when the connection with the network computer has already been terminated.

The second method, called, naturally, on-line (on line, in touch, pronounced: online), is that the subscriber, during a communication session, from his computer has the opportunity to access the contents of his mailbox, view it and read letters.

Some letters can be deleted without reading, while other letters can be answered immediately using the keyboard of your computer. You can also send all the letters prepared in advance, which are nothing more than text files. In on-line mode, the subscriber does not use the automatic mode, but sends all letters himself, indicating their addresses and issuing the appropriate command to the network computer.

One computer can serve several subscribers. In the case of using an on-line network, each subscriber communicates with a computer network and performs the necessary manipulations to receive or send information in accordance with their tasks during the communication session.

For subscribers of the off-line network, it is possible to have a separate mailbox on one computer.

Each subscriber uses only his own mailbox, and sending and receiving letters, communicating with teleconferences and accessing databases for all subscribers using this computer are carried out automatically at the time of the communication session with the computer network. Such a complex organization of information exchange using one computer leads to the need to allocate a special administrator to coordinate all information exchange, conduct sessions, communicate and detect lost letters.

The emergence of email can be traced back to 1965, when Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) employees Noel Morris and Tom Van Vleck wrote the Mail program for the CTSS (Compatible Time-Sharing System) operating system installed on the IBM 7090/7094 computer.

The general development of e-mail was driven by the development of local user interaction on multi-user systems. Users could, using the mail program (or its equivalent), send messages to each other within the same mainframe (large computer). The next step was to be able to forward a message to a user on another machine - this was done by specifying the machine name and the username on the machine. The address could be written as foo!joe (user joe on computer foo). The third step in the development of e-mail occurred with the advent of sending letters through a third computer. When used, the user's UUCP address included a route to the user through several intermediate machines (for example, gate1!gate2!foo!joe - a letter to joe through the gate1 machine, gate2 to the foo machine). The disadvantage of this addressing was that the sender (or the administrator of the machine on which the sender was working) needed to know the exact path to the recipient's machine.

After the advent of the distributed global name system DNS, domain names began to be used to specify addresses -- This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. To see it, you must have JavaScript enabled -- user user on the example.com machine. At the same time, the concept of “on a machine” was being rethought: dedicated servers began to be used for mail, to which ordinary users (only administrators) did not have access, and users worked on their machines, and mail arrived not to the users’ work machines, but to the mailbox. a server from which users retrieved their mail using various network protocols (among the currently common ones are POP3, IMAP, MAPI, web interfaces). Simultaneously with the advent of DNS, a system for reserving mail delivery routes was developed, and the domain name in the mailing address ceased to be the name of a specific computer and became simply a fragment of the mailing address. Many servers may be responsible for maintaining a domain (perhaps physically located on different continents and in different organizations), and users from the same domain may have nothing in common with each other (this is especially true for users of free email servers).

In addition, there were other e-mail systems (some of them still exist), such as: Netmail on the Fidonet network, X.400 on X.25 networks[specify]. Access to them from the Internet and back is carried out through a mail gateway. To route mail in X.25 networks, the DNS provides a special resource record with the appropriate name X25 (code 19).

Let's consider chronology email development

• - 1996, July 4 - the beginning of the commercial functioning of the Hotmail mail service. The start date of the service symbolized liberation from Internet providers.
• - 1997, March 8 - Yahoo! acquires the RocketMail portal, one of the first free email services. The emergence of Yahoo! Mail.
• - 1998, October 15 - free email from Mail.Ru started working.
• - 2000, June 26 - Yandex.Mail was launched - a free email service from Yandex.
• - 2004, April 1 - the free Gmail email service from Google was launched.

Laughing, Aristarchus clarified whether it was true that the grandmother was a magician.
Valentina, that was the woman’s name, confirmed this unscientific fact.
True, people go to her mainly to talk about toothache and warts.
In other areas of medicine, the grandmother fails.
.

It's nice to write about topics that don't involve surprises. And then you write about the history of a newfangled service, and you don’t really know whether it will remain popular in a couple of years or will sink into oblivion. I wrote, I tried, but tomorrow no one is interested in it anymore. Another thing is things that are tried and true, which change and improve, but do not disappear.

The topic of today's conversation is the history of the emergence of a well-known and familiar service. Email history. Yes, yes, now e-mail is perceived as something obvious and obligatory for existence, but a few decades ago e-mail was still a curiosity.

Otherwise, let's go in order.

How did email come about?

Back in 1965, when computers were big and their capabilities were small, a group of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote a special program called Mail. It was assumed that with the help of this program people would exchange messages sent within the same computer system.

Don’t even look for the usual post office with the address in that ancient post office [email protected], lists, spam folder and other modern things. Things were more prosaic: the Mail “program” was a separate file with a unique name, where messages sent by users were added. Yes, not much, but it was at least something.

Further development of e-mail took place solely thanks to the US Department of Defense and specifically Ray Tomlinson(Ray Tomlinson), who in 1968 worked on the secret SNDMSG program as part of an equally secret development under the name APRANET.

APRANET-, which was developed exclusively for military purposes. It was assumed that the military would communicate with each other in a closed network and this would completely eliminate the possibility of hacking from the outside.

SNDMSG(Send Message) is a program that would simplify communication between users of the APRANET military network. The secrecy of the project did not imply the disclosure of any information, and therefore civilians remained in the dark about these developments for a long time.

If you thought that with the advent of SNDMSG email had an interface that would be at least minimally familiar to the modern user, I again have to say no. To be honest, the only cardinal difference in the new program was the ability to send a personalized message. The “mailbox” was still a special file in which sent messages were accumulated.

E-mail: the appearance of a “dog” and a smiley face in mature mail

Beginning in 1972, e-mail entered a phase of rapid development. There were two events that contributed to this. Event one - Ray Tomlinson's colleague finally created some semblance of a shell for an email client. His obvious achievements were sorting letters and sending files. Another six months later, Ray Tomlinson improved the functionality of the shell.

The second event, without which it is impossible to imagine modern email, was the appearance of the “ @ " In RuNet known as “dog”.

According to Tomlinson, the badge had nothing to do with dogs. I’ll try to explain the meaning Ray himself put into it: the “@” sign reads “at”, which translates as “on”. In Russian, creating address options using the formula “ [email protected]" means "*person's name* is on *server name*".

Another important period in the history of email was 1975, when John Vitall finalized the MSG program, making it similar to modern email. There was nothing like that in her before. Automatic replies have appeared, sorting letters has become more convenient and accurate, and the organization of some other processes within the framework of working with correspondence has improved.

And it’s interesting that at first three quarters of the traffic on the APRANET network came from email messages. It even got to the point where there was a regular mailing of science fiction to employees.

Now about the smiley face.

Since its appearance, the emoticon (colon with a parenthesis, in case anyone has forgotten) is entirely due to email. In 1979 (at that time mail had already become available to scientists not involved in the defense industry), one of the scientists proposed to somewhat diversify communication by introducing emotional “islands” into the inhospitable officialdom of “dry” texts. As you understand, they became emoticons. The idea was liked by many, the smiley went around the world.

What else can I say about email? Since the article is not written for programmers, but for those interested in the phenomenon as such, I will not go into further details regarding changing protocols, expanding the potential of email, and so on. I’ll just say what you already know: today e-mail has replaced the classic paper mail and has become commonplace for billions of inhabitants of planet Earth.

Just the other day, quite by chance, I saw on TV an interview with the man who created email. Turns out, Email is already 40 years old!

Somehow before this I had never thought about how, when and by whom it was actually invented. I know a lot of people who don’t actually use the Internet, but the only thing they know and can do is send e-mail messages. Surprisingly, we are so used to e-mail that it seems like it has always been there. But this, of course, is not so.

In general, under the impression of this interview, I scoured the Internet and this is what I found out about email history.

In 1968, under the auspices of the US Department of Defense, work was carried out to create a secret project - the ARPAnet network, which was the predecessor of the Internet. Ray Tomlinson was an ordinary computer engineer at BBN and worked on the SNDMSG project, a program that would allow programmers and researchers from BBN to send messages to each other to coordinate work.

Of course, the result of Ray Tomlinson's efforts was not the height of perfection, but it was suitable for work for the first time. SNDMSG worked only on the local network, with its help users could create a text file and send it to “ Mailbox“.

« Mailbox“was just a file with a special name,” Tomlinson later wrote, “its peculiarity was that users could write as many messages as they wanted into it, but could not overwrite or read what was already in it.”

The first text messaging system before Tomlinson was created by Doug Engelbart from Stanford, and Ray in 1971 gave it the appearance of a postal envelope with columns “where”, “to” and the text of the letter itself. For convenience, he decided to create a virtual computer on each computer. Mailbox.

The next step I took Ray Tomlinson– chose symbol@ (out loud this symbol is read as “et”, although Russian users more often call it the slang term “ dog“) as a separator between the user’s mailbox address and the machine’s address on the local network.

“The @ symbol seems very expressive to me,” says Ray Tomlinson himself, “I chose it to show that the user is “on” another host, different from the local network host.”

To put it simply, when working with the program, each user of the local machine was assigned an address consisting of his name and the network name of his computer, which are separated by the “@” sign. This sign was used by Tomlinson instead of the preposition “at” (on), that is, the expression user@machine means: user so-and-so on computer so-and-so.

Location « mailbox» each Arpanet user became uniquely identified, which made it possible to easily exchange messages between them. This is how the most famous symbol of the Internet came into use.

When asked what prompted him to invention of email, Ray Tomlinson replied: "Basically that it wasn't a bad idea... Nobody instructed me to go and come up with this post."

True, e-mail acquired its familiar form after the program was refined by Lawrence Roberts. Roberts provided for viewing a list of all letters, selectively reading the desired message, saving the letter in a separate file, forwarding it to another recipient, and the ability to automatically prepare a response.

Was it possible then to assume that a modern person would write and receive tens and hundreds of letters every day, and the total daily number of messages would exceed a billion? Today, you can attach not just text to an email, but also a photo, sound and even video, and in order to create a free mailbox, you only need to have access to the Internet.

So, thanks to these people for their invention!

Some 80-70 years ago, email was considered the stuff of science fiction. Dreams of instant communication simmered in the minds of scientists, writers and ordinary people. But the appearance of the first computers, like a bolt from the blue, tore human minds out of technical illusions, opening up the real prospect of digital innovation - marking the beginning of the era of the World Wide Web and web technologies.

What about today? E-mail, or “soap”, mailbox is part of our everyday life. It is perceived as a kettle or a washing machine. It simply performs specific communication tasks and is not at all a luxury. Try to boast to them: “Here I have an e-mail! I'm very cool! At the very least, they will laugh at you. And more empathetic citizens will show concern for your mental health.

How can you react differently if so much time has passed since the history of the creation of e-mail, and now it is already used by over 100 million people all over the world. E-mail is a powerful tool for communication and data exchange. You can't go anywhere without him.

This short excursion will tell you about the emergence of computer mail and its modernization - from its origins to the present day.

60s: when computers were huge

Back in 1965, computers were truly gigantic in size, their circuits had millions of parts. They were very slow compared to modern PCs. That's when the history of email began.

In the summer of 1965, programmers Tom van Vleck and Noel Morris at MIT developed an application called MAIL based on an IBM 7090/7094 machine with CTSS OS. Of course, it was not at all similar to the email profiles and clients that you are used to seeing on the Internet.

MAIL was a special command built into the operating system rather than a separate module or program. It transmitted messages to users (programmers serving it) in one machine in the following format:

MAIL

It was written briefly, for example: MAIL M1422 2911

Through this command, tasks were assigned to technical support workers. Messages were saved in a special storage file MAIL BOX, in the cell of the specified recipient.

In parallel with the experiment on the IBM 7090/7094, the development of a software mechanism for communication on the Q32 computer was carried out in the fall of 1965. This unit was developed for the War Department by IBM Corporation and installed in the offices of Rand Corp.

The idea of ​​virtual correspondence received a new impetus for development in 1968. During this period of time, developer Ray Tomlins, as part of the military project ARPANET (the predecessor of the Internet), wrote a secret program called Send Message (SNDMSG). It provided communication between ARPANET users. But she still followed the canons of the new technology - the messages were placed and saved in a special mail file.

70s: let there be mail with a “dog” and emoticons

In 1971, the same R. Tomlins, being an employee of BBN (Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc.), created a new version. This application was written based on previous developments - a client for the intranet and an experimental module for sending files. In his memoirs, Ray talks about sending test messages with a chaotic set of characters from one machine to another to test the functions of the mail software.

In the spring of 1972, after painstaking modernization, Tomlins introduced his brainchild into the ARPANET defense network. Along with the new development came a new email address format, which is now accepted as a standard - a name with the “@” symbol (dog). On the teletype, “@” was used to indicate punctuation marks and “at” (in Russian - “on”).

In July of the same year (1972), developer Larry Roberts revealed the prototype of a desktop email client. His program was able to create catalogs of messages, copy messages and place them in a file container, forward messages to other people and use an answering machine. Among the small network community at that time, figuratively speaking, Roberts’ new product was a success. They began to actively use it.

In 1973, ARPA management, after analyzing the traffic on its network, came to the conclusion that 75% of its traffic came from e-mail correspondence. Two years later, in 1975, the first mass mailing to mailboxes appeared on the ARPANET web. It was created by Steve Walker together with moderator Einar Stefferud. The authors sent information letters manually. Subscribers received science fiction news from them (SF-Lovers).

Also in this year (1975), John Vittal introduced his all-inclusive client. It was equipped with a full range of functions for working with correspondence.

On March 26, 1976, Elizabeth II, using the equipment of the RSRE communications service in Malvern, personally sent a dispatch by computer mail.

In 1977, Wisconsin scientist Larry Landweber wrote THEORYNET, an application that forwarded correspondence across a network of over 100 IT workers. It has been adapted for use in TELNET.

On April 12, 1979, the legendary emoticon was “born,” without which not a single virtual conversation can take place today. On this significant day, Kevin McKenzie sent a request to the Message Services Group network association with an original proposal - to “dilute” the texts of electronic messages with symbols denoting emotions, for example, “; -)". His request caused fierce debate among experts: some welcomed this form of communication, while others were categorically against it. However, emoticons soon became widely used in everyday virtual communication.

80s: evolution of globalization

The history of email is closely interconnected with the development of network technologies. She practically walked hand in hand with her along the steps of technical evolution.

So, in 1981, the CSNET “web” was built for universities, which provided the opportunity to correspond by e-mail and use ARPNET. Scientists from the universities of Wisconsin and Delaware, as well as specialists from BBN and RAND Corporation, worked together on it.

1982 was marked by the emergence of the EuNet network from a group of scientists at the European Unix Users Group. Its tasks included providing correspondence by mail and providing USENET services to owners of machines with a UNIX system.

On September 20, 1987, an electronic message was sent from China to Germany using the CSNET protocol.

In 1988, the developers of the FidoNet network provided their clients with the opportunity to communicate with users from other networks.

A year later, in 1989, communication between the Internet and commercial postal services was established for the first time.

90s: e-mail to every home

In the 90s Since the last century, e-mail technology has acquired the status of a powerful communication tool accessible to a wide range of users.

In 1994, spam mailings were first recorded.

In 1997, the number of mailings on a wide variety of topics in the Liszt catalog reached 72 thousand. On March 8 of the same year, Yahoo! Mail.

In the fall of 1998, the Russian-language mail service Mail appeared on the Internet. Casio PhoneMate has released the IT-380 E-Mail Link device for working with online correspondence.

2000s: register your soap, it's easy!

With the advent of the millennium, the soap industry has grown to unprecedented proportions. Postal services began to appear on the Internet like mushrooms after rain. Businessmen, programmers, and ordinary Internet users began to actively use e-mail. However, the scale of the industry also entailed some negative manifestations.

2000 Early in the morning of May 4, many users discovered the “I Love You” virus in their mailboxes. His "strain" was spread from the Philippines through broken boxes. The total damage of the malware amounted to $7 billion. In the United States, virtually every 15th company suffered to one degree or another from this malware. On June 26, the Yandex.Mail service launched.

Nowadays, at the turn of the second decade of the 21st century and the new era, e-mail continues to actively improve as an IT technology and every year provides the user with more and more useful options for comfortable communication, exchange and storage of data.