Editing History of the Internet (section)

===Email and Usenet===
[[Email]] has often been called the [[killer application]] of the Internet. It predates the Internet, and was a crucial tool in creating it. Email started in 1965 as a way for multiple users of a [[time-sharing]] [[mainframe computer]] to communicate. Although the history is undocumented, among the first systems to have such a facility were the [[System Development Corporation]] (SDC) [[AN/FSQ-32|Q32]] and the [[Compatible Time-Sharing System]] (CTSS) at MIT.<ref>{{cite journal |title=The Risks Digest |journal=Great Moments in E-mail History |date=March 20, 1999 |volume=20 |issue=25 |url=http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/20.25.html#subj3 |access-date=April 27, 2006|last1=Neumann |first1=Peter G. }}</ref>

The ARPANET computer network made a large contribution to the evolution of electronic mail. An experimental inter-system transferred mail on the ARPANET shortly after its creation.<ref>{{cite web |title=The History of Electronic Mail |url=http://www.multicians.org/thvv/mail-history.html |access-date=December 23, 2005}}</ref> In 1971 [[Ray Tomlinson]] created what was to become the standard Internet electronic mail addressing format, using the [[@|@ sign]] to separate mailbox names from host names.<ref>{{cite web |title=The First Network Email |url=http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/firstemailframe.html |access-date=December 23, 2005 |archive-date=May 6, 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060506003539/http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/firstemailframe.html  }}</ref>

A number of protocols were developed to deliver messages among groups of time-sharing computers over alternative transmission systems, such as [[UUCP]] and [[IBM]]'s [[VNET]] email system. Email could be passed this way between a number of networks, including [[ARPANET]], [[BITNET]] and [[NSFNET]], as well as to hosts connected directly to other sites via UUCP. See the [[SMTP#History|history of SMTP]] protocol.

In addition, UUCP allowed the publication of text files that could be read by many others. The News software developed by Steve Daniel and [[Tom Truscott]] in 1979 was used to distribute news and bulletin board-like messages. This quickly grew into discussion groups, known as [[newsgroup]]s, on a wide range of topics. On ARPANET and NSFNET similar discussion groups would form via [[Electronic mailing list|mailing lists]], discussing both technical issues and more culturally focused topics (such as science fiction, discussed on the sflovers mailing list).

During the early years of the Internet, email and similar mechanisms were also fundamental to allow people to access resources that were not available due to the absence of online connectivity. UUCP was often used to distribute files using the 'alt.binary' groups. Also, [[FTPmail|FTP e-mail gateways]] allowed people that lived outside the US and Europe to download files using ftp commands written inside email messages. The file was encoded, broken in pieces and sent by email; the receiver had to reassemble and decode it later, and it was the only way for people living overseas to download items such as the earlier Linux versions using the slow dial-up connections available at the time. After the popularization of the Web and the HTTP protocol such tools were slowly abandoned.