LumberCartel.ca ✉ Electronic Mail

The Lumber Cartel, local 42 (Canadian branch)

Glossary - Electronic Mail

The term "Electronic Mail" (a.k.a., "Internet Mail") is almost always abbreviated as either "eMail" or "E-Mail" (we like to use "eMail" while others may prefer their own variations of capitalisation, with or without the hyphen). Any variation is correct as far as we're concerned, as long as it is used consistently.

Very similar in concept to voicemail, except that the message is sent and received through the operation of a computer terminal instead of a telephone. In fact, the vast majority of modern voicemail systems are merely computers that run specialized software mostly under a Unix/Linux, OS/2, or Windows operating system on a typical PC connected directly to the telephone system instead of a keyboard.

Many people commonly compare eMail to postal mail, but the flaws in this metaphor begin to stand out when one considers costs. More similarities can be found with voicemail systems in the telecommunications industry.

Standards

The standards that the internet is built on are defined in a series of documents (that currently number in the thousands) called RFCs (Request For Comments), and generally contain highly technical information that is, in particular, useful to developers and systems administrators. The format of eMail messages is defined in RFC 2822 (which obsoletes RFC 822 and earlier RFCs dating as far back as 1980). The protocol used to transfer eMail from client-to-server and server-to-server is defined in RFC 2821 (which obsoletes RFC 821).

History

In 1971, the late Ray Tomlinson (1941-2016) invented Electronic Mail by implementing the first eMail program on the ARPANET, which was one of the primary precursors to the internet. Mr. Tomlinson's interest was in using technology to help people communicate, and one of his most notable innovations included utilizing the at ("@") symbol to differentiate between a user (now known as the local-part) from the host (now known as the domain-part) so that his software could deliver eMail messages to the correct computers -- prior to this addressing system, earlier eMail implementions delivered messages locally to other users sharing one computer. In 1973, Mr. Tomlinson promoted the standardization of eMail headers in RFC 561 to prevent a divergence as eMail continued to gain popularity.

In 1974, the late Larry Roberts (1937-2018) invented Folders for Electronic Mail (the motivation was so that his boss could more easily sort eMail messages). Today, it's common to see a series of basic folders in nearly all eMail applications, including Inbox, Sent, and Trash, along with a variety of others that are mostly created by users after-the-fact.

As ARPANET continued to flourish, primarily due to the steadily increased use of eMail, other technologies also gradually began to adopt eMail into their systems, including BBSes (invented in 1978) which were a significant evolution in multi-user technologies that were also pre-cursors to the internet (the gradual introduction of the internet to the general public began to materialize most significantly in the 1990s with the introduction of web servers distributing/serving HTML documents).

Electronic Mail has played an important role in the ARPANET, BBSes, Novell NetWare networks (with the introduction of MHS network eMail in the 1983), FidoNet (which was added to BBSes in 1984 to route eMail), plus various other offerings, and continues to be an important resource to just about all internet users today to the point where it been enhanced with a plethora of additional features and usage has become so common that many users to have multiple eMail accounts beyond two addresses (e.g., a work eMail address provided by an employer, and a home eMail for personal use).