Revisionism of History by Tom Van Vleck
After the News of Ayyadurai's Invention of Email

Note: The link to Padlipsky's article was working before the controversy, click on it below.

Here is the Original Text

"Multics was connected to the ARPANet in October 1971, and a method of sending mail to other machines on the net and receiving mail from them was done in early 1972 by the MAC networking group, led by Mike Padlipsky; see his ‘And They Argued All Night...’ and RFC 491. Because the ‘@’ was a line kill character in Multics, sending Multics mail to other hosts used the control argument -at instead."

Note: The Padlipsky link is no longer working. Screen shot taken as on May 29, 2012

Here is the Revised Text

"Multics was connected to the ARPANet in October 1971, and a method of Sending mail to other machines on the net and receiving mail from them was done in early 1972 by the MAC networking group, led by Mike Padlipsky; see his ‘And They Argued All Night...’, and RFC 491. Because the '@' was a line kill character in Multics, sending Multics mail to other hosts used the control argument '-at' instead."

Note: The sarcasm against Tomlinson “inventing” email is clear. See the 2nd paragraph on Tomlinson as “inventing email”. Van Vleck only gives him credit for the use of the “@” sign.

Here is the Original Text

“Multics was connected to the ARPANet in October 1971, and a method of sending mail to other machines on the net and receiving mail from them was done in early 1972 by the MAC networking group, led by Mike Padlipsky; see his 'And They Argued All Night...', and RFC 491. Because the '@' was a line kill character in Multics, sending Multics mail to other hosts used the control argument '-at' instead.

In March, 1972, Ray Tomlinson of BBN wrote the simple mail programs SNDMSG and READMAIL, according to Larry Roberts' Internet Chronology. It doesn't Say what machine these programs ran on: probably TENEX. Ray is famous for ‘inventing electronic mail.’ In fact, electronic mail had existed for years when he wrote his programs, which became widely distributed among ARPANet users. One of Ray's contributions was to choose the ‘@’ sign to separate username from host name in mail addresses.

RFC 385 ‘Comments on the File Transfer Protocol,’ by Abhay Bhushan of the MAC networking group, dated Aug-18-1972, introduced the MLFL and MAIL commands to FTP, as a way of sending mail. Several further RFCs discussed variations on the idea of sending mail inside FTP. A meeting in Feb 1973 agreed on the use of the '@' sign in the proposed FTP TO command so that address had the format user@host, as documented in RFC 469. RFC 498 mentions that the TENEX SNDMSG command could send mail to users at remote hosts using the user@host syntax without requiring an FTP login; I guess this was Ray Tomlinson's code. In November 1975, JonPostel wrote RFC 706, ‘On the junk mail problem,‘ suggesting that the problem of junk electronic mail had been at least contemplated, if not experienced. RFC 772, ‘Mail Transfer Protocol,’ by S. Sluizer and J. Postel, dated Sep-01-1980, inaugurated a series of RFCs which described the features of the Internet mail protocols, leading eventually to the SMTP protocol used for mail today.”

Note: The entire paragraph of sarcasm against Tomlinson is removed. In addition a new paragraph is added stating that Tomlinson invented “network” email. A link is provided to Tomlinson's web site saying that he was the first to send "email". Note the term email did not even exist prior to 1978.

Here is the Revised Text

“Multics was connected to the ARPANet in October 1971, and a method of sending mail to other machines on the net and receiving mail from them was done in early 1972 by the MAC networking group, led by Mike Padlipsky; see his ‘And They Argued All Night...”, and RFC 491. Because the '@' was a line kill character in Multics, sending mail from Multics to other hosts used the control argument '-at' instead.

<PARAGRAPH REMOVED WITH SARCASM AGAINST TOMLINSON>

In late 1971, Ray Tomlinson of BBN modified the TENEX system's mail Program SNDMSG to send messages over the ARPANet to users on other TENEX systems, according to Ray's page, ‘The First Network Email.’ This feature was included in the next release of TENEX to user sites in early 1972. Many ARPANet Sites used TENEX, and users of these sites could send mail to each other beginning in 1972. Besides sending the first network email, Tomlinson chose the '@' sign to separate user name from host name in mail addresses.

Mail software that could send messages between ARPANet hosts with different operating systems was developed step by step, by many researchers at many sites, in the following years. By 1973, e-mail constituted 75 percent of ARPANet traffic, according to Wikipedia.

At first, inter-computer mail was seen as a matter of sending file contents, as CTSS and TENEX had done. RFC 385 ‘Comments on the File Transfer Protocol,’ by Abhay Bhushan of the MAC networking group, dated Aug-18-1972, proposed adding MLFL and MAIL commands to FTP, as a way of sending mail. Several further RFCs discussed variations on the idea of sending mail inside the File Transfer Protocol (FTP). A meeting in Feb 1973 agreed on the use of the ‘@’ sign in the proposed FTP TO command so that address had the format user@host, as documented in RFC 469.

As more systems connected to the ARPANet, with different ideas of what ‘mail’ was, treating mail as transferring files became more and more of a stretch. It was proposed that mail could be sent from one ‘mail transfer agent’ to another and get delivered when the recipient's machine was connected to the ARPANet. RFC 498 mentions that the TENEX SNDMSG command could send mail to users at remote hosts using the user@host syntax without requiring an FTP login; this was Ray Tomlinson's code. In November 1975, Jon Postel wrote RFC 706, ‘On the junk mail problem,’ suggesting that the problem of junk electronic mail had been at least contemplated, if not experienced. RFC 772, ‘Mail Transfer Protocol,’ by S. Sluizer and J. Postel, dated Sep-01-1980, inaugurated a series of RFCs which described the features of the Internet mail protocols, Leading eventually to the SMTP protocol used for mail today.”

Note: Van Vleck clearly states that CTSS management resisted allowing him to create a system for sending “letters” e.g. To, From, Cc, Bcc, etc., but would allow him to create a system for sending/receiving, requests, e.g. text messages.

Here is the Original Text

“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.”

Note: Now, “initially” added --- subtle but a BIG difference.

Here is the Revised Text

“The idea of sending ‘letters’ using CTSS was initially resisted by management, as a waste of resources. However, CTSS Operations did need a facility 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.”