Term of the Moment
digital asset
Redirected from: electronic mail
Definition: email
(Electronic-MAIL) Initially the transmission of text from sender to recipient, graphics were later added enabling email messages to become as entertaining as Web pages (see HTML email).
The Messaging System and the Client
Email is primarily a store and forward capability based on the Internet's Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). A mail program (email client), such as Mail in Windows, Mac Mail and Outlook, provides the user interface for mailboxes and send and receive functions. Popular email services such as Gmail and Yahoo! Mail are Web based, in which case a tab in a Web browser becomes the mail program (see email interfaces).
The Internet Changed It All
The Internet revolutionized email by turning countless incompatible islands into one global system. Initially serving its own users, in the mid-1990s, the Internet began to act as a mail gateway between the major online services such as CompuServe and America Online (AOL). It quickly became "the" messaging system for the planet. In the U.S., Internet mail is measured in trillions of messages per year. See email vs. fax, messaging system, instant messaging, read receipt and self-destructing email.
First Internet Email (1971)
The Messaging System and the Client
Email is primarily a store and forward capability based on the Internet's Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). A mail program (email client), such as Mail in Windows, Mac Mail and Outlook, provides the user interface for mailboxes and send and receive functions. Popular email services such as Gmail and Yahoo! Mail are Web based, in which case a tab in a Web browser becomes the mail program (see email interfaces).
The Internet Changed It All
The Internet revolutionized email by turning countless incompatible islands into one global system. Initially serving its own users, in the mid-1990s, the Internet began to act as a mail gateway between the major online services such as CompuServe and America Online (AOL). It quickly became "the" messaging system for the planet. In the U.S., Internet mail is measured in trillions of messages per year. See email vs. fax, messaging system, instant messaging, read receipt and self-destructing email.
The first email message was typed into a Teletype terminal connected to a PDP-10 in the back of this room. It was transmitted via ARPAnet to the PDP-10 in front. DEC engineer Dan Murphy took this photo in the Bolt, Beranek and Newman datacenter. (Image courtesy of Dan Murphy.) See ARPAnet, PDP and DEC.