Revisionism of Email History
Tom Van Vleck Inserted as Inventing Email

As of June 29, 2011, the Email History on cybertelecom.org did not include the news of Tom Van Vleck "inventing email". However, the current page last updated on May 6, 2012, nearly three months after Ayyadurai's Smithsonian News, now has an insertion "1965 - Noel Morris and Tom Van Vleck invent email".

The Evidence (BEFORE AND AFTER)

BEFORE

AFTER

Screen shot of Email History article on Cyber Telecom as of July 29, 2011 when Tom Van Vleck was not shown as inventing email.

2007 - FTC Spam Summit

2006 - Reputation Services

2004 - FTC Spam Summit

2003 - Can Spam Act

2002 - Sender accreditation (whitelist)

- Sender pays for improved delivery. Bonded sender.

2001 - RFC 2821, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (April 2001) (This document is a self-contained specification of the basic protocol for the Internet electronic mail transport.)

1999 - negative reputation services (blocklists) MAPS/Trend, Spamhaus, Senderbase, Symantic, TrustedSource

1997 - Supreme Court of Tennessee, Internet Advertising and Tennessee Disbarment, In Re: Laurence A. Canter, 1997.

1994 - Press Release- PSI And Canter & Siegel Negotiate Agreement On Future. 1994

1993 - AOL and Delphi interconnect their proprietary email systems to the Internet.

1989 - Compuserve email connects to NSFNET

1988

- Vint Cerf arranges for a connection of MCI Mail to NSFNET on an experimental basis.

- Dan Webb introduces email messages as evidence in prosecution of Reagan White House's John Poindexter. [Vanity Fair]

1985 - After 3 years, USPS terminates E-COM service. [USPS]

1982

- The Future of Mail Delivery (Washington: Joint Economic Committee, June 18 , 1982 ), p. 12.

- Postal Service Electronic Mail: The Price Isn't Right (Washington: House Government Operations Committee, October 1, 1982), p. 3.

- RFC 821, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (Aug. 1982)

- USPS Introduces E-COM (messages that originate as email, are printed out, and then delivered in hard copy form). [USPS] FCC asserts jurisdiction over E-COM as a telecommunications service.

- David Crocker, RFC 822, Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages (Aug. 13, 1982) By 1977, the Arpanet employed several informal standards for the text messages (mail) sent among its host computers. It was felt necessary to codify these practices and provide for those features that seemed imminent. The result of that effort was Request for Comments (RFC) #733, "Standard for the Format of ARPA Network Text Message", by Crocker, Vittal, Pogran, and Henderson. The specification attempted to avoid major changes in existing software, while permitting several new features. This document revises the specifications in RFC #733 , in order to serve the needs of the larger and more complex ARPA Internet. Some of RFC #733 's features failed to gain adequate acceptance. In order to simplify the standard and the software that follows it, these features have been removed. A different addressing scheme is used, to handle the case of inter-network mail; and the concept of re-transmission has been introduced.

1979 - USPS attempts to ban private email service, but is thwarted by the FCC and the US Postal Commission. [Bovard]

1979 - Meeting at BBN to discuss differences and incompatibilities between different ARPA email services. A record of the meeting is recounted in Jon Postel, RFC 808, Summary of Computer Mail Services Meeting Held at BBN on 10 January 1979 (March 1, 1982) A list of all of the differing email services was compiled by Prof David Farber and presented in Appendix A.

1979 - Former ARPA Chief and email advocate SJ Lukasik becomes FCC Chief Scientist

1979 - "President Carter was supporting a USPS proposal to offer limited electronic message service where the messages would be transferred from one post office to another electronically, and then would be brought to the consumer's address by the mailman. This threat brought the research community together and they along with the US Justice Department and the FCC opposed any plans of government intervention in e-mail. They all successfully lobbied for E-mail to be left up to the free market." [Akkad]

1978 - Reaction to the DEC Spam of 1978, which has the reputation as the first SPAM message [See Vanity Fair]

1977 - DARPA initiative to transform various differing email formats into a single, standard specification. David Crocker, John Vittal, Kenneth Pogran, Austin Henderson, RFC 733, Standard for the Format of ARPA Network Text Message (Nov. 21, 1977) ("This standard specifies a syntax for text messages which are passed between computer users within the framework of "electronic mail"." RFC notes that this work was funded by DARPA.)

1977 - USPS initiates exploration of email

1973 - 75% of traffic on ARPANet is email. [Akkad] Study was conducted pursuant to request from ARPA Chief SJ Lukasik

1972 - RFC 354, Comments on the File Transfer Protocol , ¶ 21 (Aug 18, 1972) (adding Mail File "MLFL" and the MAIL command to FTP)

1973 - Stephen Lukasik becomes Chief of ARPA. He was a major proponent of network research of of electronic mail. Would become FCC Chief Scientist in 1979.

1971 - Email is sent on MIT's CTSS to all recipients with the anti war message "There is no way to Peace. Peace is the way!" [Vleck]

1971 - Ray Tomlinson develops an email application for over the ARPANet, permitting individuals to send messages over the network and alert the recipient that a message had been received. Tomlinson chose the "@" sign for email addresses.

1970 - Monty Python Spam Skit airs

1960s - Email developed for time share computers (individuals could message each other on the same mainframe computer; but not over a network)

1890s - USPS declared it illegal to deliver paper messages through pneumatic tubes under city streets [Bovard]

Screen shot, taken on May 31, 2012, of Email History article on Cyber Telecom showing Tom Van Vleck added recently (Updated: 05/06/2012 01:12:49) as inventing email.