The History Of Email

In the early days of computer technology, an email was simply a message placed in a directory of another user on the same computer.  It had little function except to provide electronic information to the next person logging onto the computer.  Computers of that age were all mainframes; large processing units used in the early 1960’s by corporations and industries to process copious amounts of information.  Up to one hundred individuals might use a mainframe, and leaving messages for other users became commonplace.  The intrinsic value of these large machines was quickly realized, which set the wheels of technology spinning faster than ever seen before to improve and fine tune even better computers.

Within a short span of time, designs and sizes of computers were reduced drastically while their capabilities soared beyond imagination. Different computers became able to talk to each other when inter-networking was developed for military use.  Just like standard mail, an address was needed to get messages to their designated mailbox. In 1972, one man began to use the “@” symbol on computers to signify a message to be sent:  the birth of the email that we know today.  Military personnel were among the first to utilize the new communication system, but its popularity rapidly spread so that within just a few years, software had been developed to organize email into an extremely useful program.  This coincided with the emergence of the Internet, which introduced people of every walk of life to the advantages of email.