An email message sent in the early 1970s is similar to a basic email sent today.
The history of modern Internet email services reaches back to the early ARPANET, with standards for encoding email messages published as early as 1973 (RFC 561).
Some systems also supported a form of instant messaging, where sender and receiver needed to be online simultaneously. Email is the medium, and each message sent therewith is called an email ( mass/count distinction).Įmail's earliest development began in the 1960s, but at first users could send e-mail only to other users of the same computer. Email later became a ubiquitous (very widely used) communication medium, to the point that in current use, an e-mail address is often treated as a basic and necessary part of many processes in business, commerce, government, education, entertainment, and other spheres of daily life in most countries.
Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when 'mail' meant only physical mail (hence e- + mail). When a 'robot' on Wikipedia makes changes to image files, the uploader receives an email about the changes made.Įlectronic mail ( email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ('mail') between people using electronic devices.
