A tale of Email!

A Tale of E-Mail!

Email as we know today is one of the most vital parts of society’s modern technological era. It has developed through so many stages since it was first introduced into computers and the internet. As people of our new generation, we see it as something that grew up with us and something we use as an everyday resource to relay information and news to our peers. There are many people, like myself, who rely on email as one of their primary resources to contact people and check it constantly, multiple times a day. So what would our complex community be without our precious email? Would we still be sending stamped envelopes through our mail boxes and the post office? It could be a possibility. Here we look to see the reason why we fortunately don’t need to do things like in our 21^st century.

Some people see email today as an invention, when it was more of an evolution rather then it just coming out of nowhere. Email had actually started up predating the internet. The first stage of it that we use today dates back to 1965 where messages were communicated between multiple people all though one time sharing main frame computer. One of the first facilities in which there was one of these mainframe computers was at MIT in which they had a CTSS. It is believed that a big contribution of the creation of email went to ARPANET, which essentially was one of the first stages of the actual internet and its development. ARPANET was the first link to link computer network that first started out between two different colleges, and technically evolved into the internet today. These types of mainframe computers though were just computers that connected the terminals to the mainframe and nothing else. They couldn’t store any memory or anything modern such as computers today.

The person to be credited with actually inventing the first of first email address format was Ray Tomlinson in 1971. His significance of using the “@” symbol to separate names and hosts is something that set him out among other developers. Email would begin to start developing as time and technology progressed on. Email is seen as one of the most important aspects of the internet today. But how couldn’t it be? Email through the internet grants us access to be able to contact people all over the world, regardless of where they are (via wireless connection). As much credit as Email owes to ARPANET for introducing it, ARPANET owes just as much credit to the introduction of email for being able to expand their network. By 1974, hundreds of military users were beginning to use email. A few years later in1976, ¾ of the traffic that ARPANET held was email, a huge increase from what it started as. The first of the standard email was called SMTP (simple message transfer protocol). Soon, Email would really start to take off; having technological increases year after year.

It is obvious that Email is pretty common; over 600 million users are connected today. The internet that I use today as already mentioned is it is a huge part of my life. Many college students probably have the same perspective as me on this subject. As a typical college student, Email is a pretty big part of all our lives, including professors, faculty, and staff. It is something that connects us all as a common source. Things for me would be a lot more difficult and complicated as a college student without email. How would students be able to come in contact with other students or teachers? Or even Parents instead of long distance calling. This fortunately isn’t a factor for me, since I live 30 minutes away. The main point is that Email in my perspective is a common ground in which everyone we know and who has access to an internet based computer can relate to. It is just something that we grew up with and that we probably can’t live without!