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KF5JRV > TECH 13.04.16 13:23l 62 Lines 3336 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 1447_KF5JRV
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Subj: Email History
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Sent: 160413/1117Z 1447@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA BPQ1.4.65
"Compatible Time Sharing System," Precursor of Word Processing and
Email 1961
In 1961 Fernando J. CorbatóOffsite Link and team at MIT developed one
of the first time-sharing operating systems, CTSS
(Compatible Time-Sharing System.)
CTSS had one of the first computerized text formatting utilities,
called RUNOFF, the precursor of word processing, and one of the first
inter-user messaging implementations, presaging instant messaging and
electronic mail.
Tom Van Vleck & Noel Morris Write One of the First Email Programs 1965
Though its exact history is murky, email (e-mail) began as a way for
users on time-sharing mainframe computers to communicate. Among the
first systems to have an email facility were System Development
Corporation of Santa Monica's programming for the AN/FSQ-32 (Q32)
built by IBM for the United States Air Force Strategic Air Command
(SAC) and MIT's Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS). The authors
of the first email program for CTSS were American software engineer
Tom Van Vleck and American computer scientist Noel Morris. The two men
created the program in the summer of 1965.
"A proposed CTSS MAIL command was described in an undated Programming
Staff Note 39 by Louis Pouzin, Glenda Schroeder, and Pat Crisman.
Numerical sequence places the note in either Dec 64 or Jan 65. PSN 39
proposed a facility that would allow any CTSS user to send a message
to any other. The proposed uses were communication from "the system"
to users informing them that files had been backed up, and communication
to the authors of commands with criticisms, and communication from
command authors to the CTSS manual editor.
"I was a new member of the MIT programming staff in spring 1965. When I
read the PSN document about the proposed CTSS MAIL command, I asked
"where is it?" and was told there was nobody available to write it. My
colleague Noel Morris and I wrote a version of MAIL for CTSS in the
summer of 1965. Noel was the one who saw how to use the features of
the new CTSS file system to send the messages, and I wrote the actual
code that interfaced with the user. The CTSS manual writeup and the
source code of MAIL are available online. (We made a few changes from
the proposal during the course of implementation: e.g. to read one's
mail, users just used the PRINT command instead of a special argument to
MAIL.)
"The idea of sending "letters' using CTSS was resisted by management, as
a waste of resources. However, CTSS Operations did need a faclility to
inform users when a request to retrieve a file from tape had been
completed, and we proposed MAIL as a solution for this need. (Users who
had lost a file due to system or user error, or had it deleted for
inactivity, had to submit a request form to Operations, who ran the
RETRIEVE program to reload them from tape.) Since the blue 7094
installation in Building 26 had no CTSS terminal available for the
operators, one proposal for sending such messages was to invoke MAIL
from the 7094 console switches, inputting a code followed by the
problem number and programmer number in BCD. I argued that this was
much too complex and error prone, and that a facility that let any
user send arbitrary messages to any other would have more general
uses, which we would discover after it was implemented"
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