On Sun, Mar 4, 2018 at 4:47 PM, Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org> wrote:

On Sun, 4 Mar 2018, Paul Winalski wrote:

[ ... ] 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.

That's the claim, yes.

I just finished Brian Dear's 'Friendly Orange Glow" and Plato was after Tomlinson.

But the concept of email goes way back.

Indeed, it does, but only on the same system.

Some sort of messaging between users was pretty standard on timeshared systems. It was in IBM and DEC systems in the late 60s. But if you believe the Internet history in Katie Hafner's 'Where Wizards Stay Up Late' Tomlinson extended to the ArpaNet - where is why the @ was important. The book is great but the whole chapter on Mail formats is really a fun read. ArpaNet mail had been around a for a few years before any attempt to standardize it occurred. This was in part because most of the systems were supplied by DARPA and thus had some level of commoniality - al buet extensively modified (TOPS-10 vs TENEX vs ITS). Brian Reed is quoted in that book extensively and I remember some of the events described between the PDP-10's that made up most of the ArpaNet in those days.

I always have gotten a kick out of SMTP being considered 'simple' - but given then before that email was a hacked on to FTP and really was a kludge and after though.

BTW: Paul's comment about DECnet's use of double colon (muchless UUCP's use of bang) to describe separate 'nodes' is all post ArpaNet and Tomlinson's original work. DEC did not even start the work on DECnet, nor IBM on SNA until long after the ArpaNet succeeded. In fact, both firms originally poo-pooed the ideas [again read Katie's book -- a fascinating history].

As for the 'tosser' that is making claims, I am under the impression he some how succeeded in getting a copyright for it. How is unclear, but he did. And that's his claim for invention based on work he did which he admits was in 1978 -- which is 7-10 years after the ArpaNet: [ http://fortune.com/2016/03/07/who-really-invented-email/.] To me, a strange part is that he suing people that claim otherwise. I really don't see how he can win those, but I'm not a laywer and I guess copyright gives him certain rights. O note that, I have been using messaging system - aka email, pretty nearly ever day since I first start using computers in the late 1960s. So I have a very hard time taking this guy seriously.

Clem