4 Mar
2018
4 Mar
'18
9:50 p.m.
On 3/4/18, Dave Horsfall <dave(a)horsfall.org> wrote:
In the meantime, some tosser (his name is not important) is claiming that
he invented email first; I recall that APL\360 had a "mailbox" facility,
but it certainly didn't use "@".
VAX/VMS version 1 (1978) had email, capable of sending messages either
locally or over a DECnet network. In keeping with standard DECnet
syntax, it used "::" instead of "@". Len Kawell was the author of
VMS
mail. He got the idea, and copied the UI, from the University of
Illinois PLATO CAI system, which had email capability. I don't know
if PLATO's email was capable of transmitting messages between computer
systems; Tomlinson may have been the first to do that.
But the concept of email goes way back.
-Paul W.