The Evolution of Email Throughout Time

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Long before the Internet actually existed, email or electronic mail, could be traced back to the directories of a new computer system used at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965. They had built a machine called “Compatible Time-sharing System” and eventually allowed university students and other registered users from around the New England States to share and store files on it. Students and faculty could login and store files on MIT’s IBM 7094 computer (See Figure 1). I was here that the users would create a text file and name it “TO JOE” for example, and place it in a users directory for them to see the next time they logged in. Certainly this wasn’t the email as we know it today, but a very crude and simple method of leaving an electronic message for a peer. Much like leaving a sticky note to a friend on the monitor. No one ever thought of it as a need and email was never created. It just emerged as a new way to leave messages for ones peers. As time went on, work started on something that would ultimately change the world. A group of engineers were sanctioned by the U.S. Government and started working on a series of networked computers that would be used by the military to send and store secret information between bases. Originally there were only four computers connected to different research labs around the country. But that quickly expanded as they found solutions such as TCP/IP to help standardize on how data would be delivered from client to server. The name of this project was called ARPAnet and stands for the Advanced Research Project Agency which was a branch of the military that worked on secret systems during the cold war. ARPAnet was essentially the grandfather of the Internet and helped t... ... middle of paper ... ...d templates that are provided today. Email will become more social and dynamic and will be a far cry from the small text messages that were left in a person’s directory folder only 49 years ago. Works Cited "Aussies' Fix for 'stagnated' Email." The Sydney Morning Herald. N.p., 21 Feb. 2012. Web. 01 Apr. 2014. "Email." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 04 May 2014. Web. 07 Apr. 2014. "EmailHistory.org." EmailHistory. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Apr. 2014. "How-To Geek." Evolution of Email. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Apr. 2014. "Infographic - The Evolution of Email." Infographic - The Evolution of Email. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Apr. 2014. "The Past, Present & Future of Email." Infographic. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Apr. 2014. Tschabitscher, Heinz. "The First Email Message." About.com Email. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Apr. 2014.

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