100 Ideas that Changed the Web

Send and thou shalt receive

IDEA N^o 51

WEBMAIL

‘Don’t tell anyone, this isn’t what we’re supposed to be working on’, said Ray Tomlinson when he sent the first email message in 1971. He need not have worried – his SNDMSG program soon had the support of everyone else working on ARPANET.

Ten years later, an Internet Standard for electronic mail was introduced. Simple Message Transfer Protocol (SMTP) laid the foundations for the widespread adoption of email. At first, however, it was used by scientists, academics and government. It was not until 1988, when commercial traffic was given access to the internet, that email really took off.

In the early days, most people got their email addresses from their internet service provider. If you moved provider, ...