History of email
Attempts at interoperability
In 1971 the first ARPANET email was sent, and through RFC 561, RFC 680, RFC 724, and finally 1977's RFC 733, became a standardized working system. PLATO IV was networked to individual terminals over leased data lines prior to the implementation of personal notes in 1974. Unix mail was networked by 1978's uucp, which was also used for USENET newsgroup postings, with similar headers. BerkNet, the Berkeley Network, was written by Eric Schmidt in 1978 and included first in the Second Berkeley Software Distribution. It provided support for sending and receiving messages over serial communication links. The Unix mail tool was extended to send messages using BerkNet. The delivermail tool, written by Eric Allman in 1979 and 1980 (and shipped in 4BSD), provided support for routing mail over dissimilar networks, including Arpanet, UUCP, and BerkNet. (It also provided support for mail user aliases.) The mail client included in 4BSD (1980) was extended to provide interoperability between a variety of mail systems. BITNET (1981) provided electronic mail services for educational institutions. It was based on the IBM VNET email system. 1983 – MCI Mail Operated by MCI Communications Corporation. This was the first commercial public email service to use the internet. MCI Mail also allowed subscribers to send regular postal mail (overnight) to non-subscribers. In 1984, IBM PCs running DOS could link with FidoNet for email and shared bulletin board posting. Four companies provided electronic mail services in the United Kingdom in 1985, enabling subscribers to send email over telephone connections or data networks such as Packet Switch Stream. Early interoperability among independent systems included:
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