The evolution of email

1969. Neil, Buzz, and a guy nobody remembers made it to the moon. A feat that hasn't been achieved since. The top minds in America put them there with rockets, and less computing power than the device you're reading this on. 

But while mission control spoke to people several miles in space, the rest of the world was still picking up a pen and paper (the most advanced perhaps afforded a typewriter) when they wanted to write to one another. Luckily help was on the way.

Also in 1969, something started that would evolve into a channel for sending and receiving messages anytime and anywhere. A way to prepare and structure thoughts, maintain formality, provide a written record, and allow convenient responses. All while being less intrusive, and more organized than phone calls. 

Yes, email is now a vital tool for us all. But how did it come about? 

The earliest embryo of email

The history of email began when a system called ARPANET (short for Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) came into existence. A precursor to the Internet we use today, it was built mainly to allow resource and file sharing between remote computers (rather than browsing external servers). Systems like this (and even some before it) allowed users to store messages for one another on those shared drives, but this was hardly the personal, direct, and attention-demanding way we think of as email. 

When was the first email sent?

All that changed in 1971, when there was finally a ‘giant leap’ forward for email. Computer engineer Ray Tomlinson modified two existing programs on ARPANET — SNDMSG, a rudimentary messenger, and CPYNET, a file transfer system. By combining both, Thomlinson created a system that allowed messages to be sent to specific computers on a network for the first time. 

It was the first networked email system, enabling communication beyond leaving a message on a single server. This might be considered the first email message. Perhaps most notably, Tomlinson created the structure of an email address we still use today including name, host, and that all-important @ symbol. While it did have previous uses, it’s doubtful many of us would regularly use this characterful symbol were it not for Tomlinson. In some places, it’s noted for its resemblance to a snail, or even a little monkey.

By standardizing the address, and allowing people to receive messages directly in a secure and fast manner, Tomlinson truly set email on the path to what it is today.

Email in professional settings

It’s important to note that the expansion of email in the 1970s was only possible due to the growth of ARPANET. It grew from four ‘nodes’ to over 20, and these nodes included many educational establishments, as well as military and government institutions, like NASA. 

Because of this expansion, email was adopted in many professional settings as a standard way to communicate. Researchers, academics, and military personnel all used email as a way to stay in touch.

In 1975, John Vittal developed the first program that resembles what we think of as an email application today. For the first time, buttons like ‘Reply’ and ‘Forward’ were present, making it easier to group messages into conversations and share with multiple recipients.

The late 70s and early 80s

Queen Elizabeth might have sent her first email in 1976 (on good old ARPANET), but you probably don’t need me to tell you that the likes of us didn’t get to send emails, much less in the comfort of our homes, until around two decades after that.

For this to happen, ARPANET had to evolve. It became integrated with other networks (‘Internetwork’ being the derivation of the word Internet). The adoption of TCP/IP protocols in 1983 was crucial to this integration, as it enabled different networks enjoying compatibility with one another. 

Also crucial to the evolution of emails as we know them today was the creation of the domain name system (or DNS). In ARPNET, a single file called HOSTS.TXT was used to connect hostnames and IP addresses. Maintaining the file was a manual process, as was its distribution to members of the system. The newly-created domain name system was expandable, and easier to understand, making it more user-friendly. 

From a technical standpoint, it also made it easier to manage and route emails in an increasingly complex network. While we kept the beloved @ symbol from Tomlinson, the user@host format was replaced with user@domain.com. The iconic email structure’s gestation period was complete.

More e-volution

In 1985, emails finally got their attachments complete with an official, user-friendly interface. Prior to this, files had to be encoded into the body text of the email. The encoding might have changed (from uuencode and BinHex to more efficient methods like MIME in the 1990s), but the principle of attaching files is one that has stayed with email ever since, and is crucial to how we think of, and use, them today.

Finally, the 80s saw the development of key mailing protocols. IMAP, POP, SMTP all came into being in the 80s. 

The 90s

Arguably, this was the revolution. PlayStation, Girl Power, Pokemon, and somewhere in the mix, email took its biggest strides to date. This time, it was less about technical specs (although everything improved immeasurably throughout that decade), and more about adoption. In the early 90s if you knew what an email was you were seen as down with the kids; a technical whiz. By the early 2000s, every pipsqueak and their grandad was pinging emails around left right and center. So what changed?

With companies going online en-masse, and a burgeoning (if slightly cost-prohibitive) home market, things started looking up for email. But email still wasn’t completely easy. Most people got their email address from their Internet Service Provider (ISP). But how did they get their ISP, you ask?

Setting up home email

They’d come home, clutching a CD from your local PC store, pop it in, and their dial-up Internet plan would come with one mailbox. After several hours shouting at a non-compliant router, and tearing up the carpet to find if there was a break in the cable, we might finally get online. Next came email setup.

Depending on who you chose, it could be a fairly complicated process. Putting server details into an application like Outlook was hardly a walk in the park. Online mailboxes weren’t really a thing, so your emails were stored on your hard drive. 

The invention of spam

The first spam email was sent in 1978 by a digital marketer who forwarded emails to several hundred ARPANET users. He was perhaps the first to see potential in this kind of inbox marketing, which in itself, was likely derived from postal junk mail, but he certainly wouldn't be the last. 

Rather like the seat belt being invented 73 years after the car, it wasn't until 1996 that the first spam filter emerged. It was built by two engineers, Dave Rand and Paul Vixie. Using a protocol called MAPS, it blocked the IP addresses of known offenders, meaning none of their messages got through. 

From there, technical innovations have helped restrict emails based on anything from non-matching names, to known subject lines, or dodgy mail servers. Now, we're even seeing AI being used to stop unwanted emails - but we're getting ahead of ourselves. Back to 1996…

It was around this time that email became the standard for almost all business-related communications. It is, after all, easier to communicate with customers (especially by way of aftercare) using email. There are no implied postage costs, and it requires a less intensive team than a phone line. This is largely due to peak times, where people all tend to ring in at once. These considerations, and others, saw businesses point to email as their preferred method of communication, almost across the board over post and telephone.

The launch of Hotmail & Rocketmail in 96

The significance of these two big players (Rocketmail later became Yahoo) can’t really be overstated. Yes, they were trendy, and some of the first companies to issue free email addresses outside of ISPs, but more than this… 

They boasted:

• An online mailbox, making emails accessible from anywhere with an Internet connection.
• Free online storage.
• A cooler email address than the stuffy ISP ones.

And so what if Hotmail’s inbox size limit was quite a restrictive 2MB? We could log in at work for a sneaky check of our personal emails, and nobody was any the wiser. 

But it was more than that. By making email cool, companies like these helped facilitate what would come next. True email for the masses.

The early naughties (00s)

Who remembers the endless chain emails? Receiving life updates from people you’d never met? These sorts of organic creations emerged now that a more casual audience had finally got its hands on the medium of email. 

People and continents felt a little closer together thanks to email. But while the good held hands and sang We Are The World in celebration of this new beast, there were of course those who saw an opportunity to take advantage. 

Emerging security threats

Spams, phishing, viruses, and other scams went into overdrive throughout the naughties. You name it, someone tried to email it. Over time, we became more sophisticated at spotting them, but the perpetrators became more sophisticated at disguising their intentions. Meanwhile, the technical teams of the various email platforms came up with their own ways to combat these things. From anti-virus software scanning every message, to encryption protocols like PGP (the imaginatively titled Pretty Good Encryption). 

There are too many technical processes to list here when it comes to security as a whole, but the easy way to think of it is that every time a new threat presented itself, teams of people were on hand to think of a way around it. 

Gmail 

We can't write this blog without tipping our hats to the only program brazen enough to attempt to replace the E of Email. 

Arguably, Gmail was just Google’s crack at Hotmail. It didn't particularly do anything differently but it did do things much better. It offered massive storage improvements so there was more space for emails and attachments. It improved spam filtering resulting in significantly fewer dodgy emails in our inboxes, and applied its parent’s infamous search engine to the context of our emails. 

Love it or hate it, what Gmail did changed email providers forever. By introducing new features and more generous limits, all of its competitors had to raise their game too, so email in general got better as a result.

The 2010s

Okay, for some, it happened a little before 2010, but for the sake of a nice round number, it was around here that we all started wanting emails everywhere we went — in our pockets. The advent of email on the go led to several innovations. Firstly, a whole new set of apps, but also an improvement in synchronization between our devices.

It became easy to create an email on your device, and have that draft available on your PC the moment it was ready. This synergy helped keep track of things and was a definite step up from how applications like Outlook had previously stored anything created “offline”.

Managing our lives

Calendar functionality also became bigger around this time. With device software usually made by either Apple or Google, at least one mail app on any device is likely to be hardwired to the device’s calendar, meaning meetings we arrange by email are immediately synchronized with our general calendars and are carried with us at all times. Small things like this are what make the integration of email so much better on devices.

It also became easier to add multiple accounts to one email app. Not a fan of Outlook? You could now put your Hotmail address into the Gmail app and vice versa. Email setup became much easier, and many platforms, like these, have automatic integrations where they simply direct you to log into the account in question.

The email marketing boom

The 2010s also saw an explosion of email marketing. To be clear, email marketing isn't spam (although the two can become conflated if companies aren't careful). 

Email marketing is what we get from companies we actually want to hear from. And unlike spam, the offers are real, and the products are (in theory) relevant to us. Done correctly, email marketing can be harnessed by businesses to make thousands of pounds, without annoying its recipients. Why is it so successful? Well, there are several reasons, but it’s mainly to do with the fact it’s low-cost, has a self-declared engaged audience, and can be tailored endlessly to meet demographics. 

The 2020s and beyond…

While business email may have started the entire email craze, it has certainly come a long way since those early days. Free platforms are okay for our personal addresses, but businesses now require tools that the general population don’t. And smaller businesses now need an easy, low-cost way to look professional. 

Even pre-2020, sending emails to clients using a generic account (like Gmail and Hotmail) became associated with spam or phishing threats. So, the importance of having an email address that contains your domain name increased to add business authenticity.

Plus, there are other tools businesses now need, alongside a ‘yourname@yoursite.com’ address. Increased security, high-level email handling (aliases and forwarding), and calendars are just a few. This has become important for businesses of all sizes, which is why you can find providers of professional email just for small businesses. 

AI and the future

Today, machine learning can be used to help protect our inboxes. Where AI tools can help organize files, or even to write our emails for us if we want. AI is only just beginning to reveal its own power as we as humans conceive of new ways to utilize it. 

We’re likely to see AI become far more integrated than ever into our lives, and email is no exception. 

In terms of security, AI's duality means that for every person who tries to use it to hack emails or to enable another scam, someone else is brandishing their own AI to fight it. This bizarre battle of good computer vs. evil computer means that we’re unlikely to see huge compromises in email security.

But even AI is not the end. The future of email is over the horizon offering more advanced security, and other integrations that would take it to the next level.

Email has had a colorful and interesting past. Perhaps more than anything, it’s a testament to the endurance of the written word as a form of communication. Something that, against the odds, has not only stood the test of time, but flourished as more and more ways to use it have emerged. Every other virtue of email is only possible because of our innate desire to communicate via words.