Re: old school

["Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

The first time I ever saw email as we know it 
(username -at- host) was in 1976.  My first job
out of school was with an aircraft company 
that was hooked up to DARPANET.  At the
time, nobody really knew what to do with it,
and the majority of messages that were sent
from node to node consisted of Xmas images
of Santa Claus and various attempts to draw
the starship Enterprise using nothing but
asterisks.

Prior to that, in college we had an "online"
messaging system that consisted of a
location reserved for each user of a mainframe
system.  Whenever your turn came to use the
system, you checked your reserved location
for messages that consisted of text files other
users had left there for you.  As a messaging
system, it was only slightly less usable than
a bulletin board, and was probably obsoleted
by the invention of the Post-It note.

On the plus side, spam was still something
that only came in cans.

Gene Kim-Eng


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Karen Mulholland" <kemulholland -at- yahoo -dot- com>
> I have friends I first *emailed* in 1985. As I recall,
> Data General's Comprehensive Electronic Office (CEO)
> had email and a calendar. Maybe a couple other things
> too. A handful of us instantly spotted email's
> potential and started using it to hold daily
> competitions for the most heinous dirty limerick. CEO
> allowed you to create email groups and aliases, so I
> set up an alias "Goat" for my boss. Later I found out
> that the recipient always got to see the alias. D'oh.
> BTW, I kept my job because the boss thought it was
> hysterically funny.

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