A Look Back At Evolution Of E-Mail Since Its Existence From Last Century

Looking back, one cannot imagine a world without e-mails. With the pandemic hitting the globe, e-mails have become an even more integral part of our lives. Since time immemorial, it has been a crucial interactive component in the professional world. The use of e-mails for digital marketing has also been on the rise.

As per a Statista report, the number of global e-mail users has amounted to four billion and is expected to grow to 4.6 billion by 2025.

First Electronic Message

World's one of the earliest e-mail systems was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965, and it was called MAILBOX. At first, it allowed users to share files and messages on a central desk from where the user could access it by logging in to their remote terminals.

In 1971, an American computer programmer, Tomlinson, found a method of sending e-mails between different computers and introduced the "@" sign to allow the messages to be user-specific.

The first e-mail standard was given in 1973, and it included the 'to' and 'from' fields and forwarding the e-mails to recipients who were not added before.

Who Sent First E-Mail?

In 1976, Queen Elizabeth II sent an e-mail on Arpanet, becoming the first head of the state to use it. It is said that Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign was the first to use e-mail in the same year. It did not take much longer for someone to create a spam e-mail. In 1978, Gary Thurek started a spam e-mail for marketing a new product, and he claimed that e-mail earned $13 million in sales.

In 1979, Shiva Ayyadurai made a program called E-MAIL for the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, which sent electronic messages to the university. Ayyadurai claimed that he was the actual inventor of e-mail, and this debate has existed since then.

Growth Of E-Mail

In 1989, Lotus notes e-mail software (IBM Notes) was released. Before this, e-mails were only available to students and employees, but the birth of the internet revolutionized e-mails completely as people could use them to create their e-mail addresses. On 28th August 1991, the first e-mail from space was sent. Although e-mails were being sent, no attachments could be added to them until 1992, when attachment in e-mails was born.

In 1996, with the third release of Internet Explorer, Microsoft also released the Internet Mail and News 1.0 (Outlook). Hotmail also started its free e-mail services this year, and Spam had become a big problem by 1998.

In 2002, Blackberry became the first device with e-mail capabilities. With the launch of Gmail in 2004, the game changed completely, and it came up with new features and more storage.

As years passed, many innovations were brought forward. The year 2020 changed everything. During the pandemic, e-mails were an essential means of communication, especially with work from home.

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