The history of email entails an evolving set of technologies and standards that culminated in the email systems in use today. Computer-based messaging between users of the same system became possible following the advent of time-sharing in the early 1960s, with a notable implementation by MIT's CTSS project in 1965. Informal methods of using shared files to pass messages were soon expanded into the first mail systems. Most developers of early mainframes and minicomputers developed similar, but generally incompatible, mail applications. Over time, a complex web of gateways and routing systems linked many of them. Some systems also supported a form of instant messaging, where sender and receiver needed to be online simultaneously. In 1971, Ray Tomlinson sent the first mail message between two computers on the ARPANET, introducing the now-familiar address syntax with the '@' symbol designating the user's system address. Over a series of RFCs, conventions were refined for sending mail messages over the File Transfer Protocol. Several other email networks developed in the 1970s and expanded subsequently. Proprietary electronic mail systems began to emerge in the 1970s and early 1980s. IBM developed a primitive in-house solution for office automation over the period 1970–1972, and replaced it with OFS (Office System), providing mail transfer between individuals, in 1974. This system developed into IBM Profs, which was available on request to customers before being released commercially in 1981. CompuServe began offering electronic mail designed for intraoffice memos in 1978. The development team for the Xerox Star began using electronic mail in the late 1970s. Development work on DEC's ALL-IN-1 system began in 1977 and was released in 1982. Hewlett-Packard launched HPMAIL (later HP DeskManager) in 1982, which became the world's largest selling email system. The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) protocol was implemented on the ARPANET in 1983. LAN email systems emerged in the mid-1980s. For a time in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it seemed likely that either a proprietary commercial system or the X.400 email system, part of the Government Open Systems Interconnection Profile (GOSIP), would predominate. However, a combination of factors made the current Internet suite of SMTP, POP3 and IMAP email protocols the standard (see Protocol Wars). During the 1980s and 1990s, use of email became common in business, government, universities, and defense/military industries. Starting with the advent of webmail (the web-era form of email) and email clients in the mid-1990s, use of email began to extend to the rest of the public. By the 2000s, email had gained ubiquitous status. The popularity of smartphones since the 2010s has enabled instant access to emails.
Precursors The first electrical transmission of messages began in the 19th century in the form of the electrical telegraph, which started to replace earlier forms of telegraphy from the 1840s in the United Kingdom and the United States. Telex became an operational teleprinter service in 1933, beginning in Germany and Europe, and after 1945 spread around the world. The AUTODIN military network in the United States, first operational in 1962, provided a message service between 1,350 terminals, handling 30 million messages per month, with an average message length of approximately 3,000 characters. By 1968, AUTODIN linked more than 300 sites in several countries.
Terminology and usage The term mail in the context of messages between computer users has been in use since the 1960s. In RFCs relating to the ARPANET, network mail was used since 1973. Historically, the term electronic mail is any electronic document transmission. For example, several writers in the early 1970s used the term to refer to fax document transmission. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has a first quotation for electronic mail in the modern context in 1975. Electronic mail was widely discussed in the late 1970s, but was usually shortened simply to mail. In September 1976, a Business Week article entitled When interoffice mail goes electronic remarked "In a sense, electronic mail is not new". The OED provides a June 1979 first usage for E-mail: "Postal Service pushes ahead with E-mail" in the journal Electronics. No earlier usage has been found; although, the first usage of the term e-mail may be lost. CompuServe rebranded its electronic mail service as EMAIL in April 1981, which popularized the term. The term computer mail was also used in the early 1980s. The June 1979 usage of E-mail referred to the United States Postal Service (USPS) project called Electronic Computer Originated Mail, which they abbreviated E-COM. USPS began looking into electronic mail in 1977 resulting in the E-COM proposal in September 1978. The service launched in 1982, allowing corporate customers to send electronic mail to a post office branch from where it was printed and delivered in the normal way. It operated until 1985.
Host-based mail systems With the introduction of MIT's Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) in 1961, for the first time multiple users could log into a central system from remote terminals, and store and share files on the central disk. Informal methods of using such shared files to pass messages were soon developed and expanded into the first mail systems.
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