What was your first email system?

[robert@fm]

Mine was the UK's The Legend Internet of Bradford, West Yorkshire — my first email address was thus @legend.co.uk, although I soon parodied it as LegEnd.co.uk (after CompuServe and similar BiCapitalised providers). This is the only account I've paid for, so far...

[D@vid]

Mine was AOL...yuck! It was good for a total newbie.

[SusanUKF]

Originally posted by D@vid
Mine was AOL...yuck! It was good for a total newbie.

Comparable in quality to msn/hotmail....

Susan.

[xylon]

yahoo.com.cn

[dryoldlime]

Originally Posted by snsh

Where did you cut your teeth on email? What do you use as reference point?

edit: oh! I left of a generic POP account, and Compuserve

Why not redo the survey and include CompuServe?


post note: From year 2004 survey began. Not sure results would be much different if survey were revised and posted. Still, better if were.
Back in mid 1990's, CompuServe and AOL were strongly promoted; big physical distributions of compact discs to install C.S. and AOL software...

[jeffpan]

my first one is a @hotmail.com with 3-characters username. that was registered in 1999 IIRC.

[somdcomputerguy]

My first email service was with Yahoo. Soon I bought a domain name so I could have 'my own email address' and soon after that I bought a shared host web plan. Soon, real soon, after that I discovered that I could then install Squirrelmail and use my webhosts mail servers. After that I said good bye Yahoo! This was in the early '90's, '91 I believe.

- Bruce

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by somdcomputerguy

... install Squirrelmail and use my webhosts mail servers. After that I said good bye Yahoo! This was in the early '90's, '91 I believe.

I cannot have bee in the early 90's: Yahoo was founded in 1994, and Squirrelmail was launched in 1999.

[somdcomputerguy]

Originally Posted by hadaso

I cannot have been in the early 90's

I never was too good with dates.. I know I got the domain name and web host account in the early 90's though. At least, I think I know..

[CyberSmurf]

Eudora and Outlook Express.

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by David

I had a DEC Micro (PDP 11/23) on my desk at work (in 1981) It had a 10 MB hard drive and a 300 baud modem. I did send a text file to another operator (all the buildings were hooked together on leased phone lines) ...

(Somewhat delayed response... more the two decades...)
If text messages to operators count, then sometime in the summer vacation of 1979 or the summer vacation of 1980, when I had a summer job programming in the Department of Statistics Ministry of Agriculture research center, I discovered a JCL command to display text on the operator's console of IBM 370 mainframe we used, so I used it several times to send the machine's operator a message. We used the computer by submitting jobs on punched cards, then waiting for the output from job. The jobs were submitted into a queue, and heavier jobs had to wait a long time to run, and my program was pretty big (more than a thousand punched cards). After a job was submitted we would get a printout with the job's number, so sometimes I sent the operator a text message saying "PLEASE RUN JOB NUMBER ##### NOW" and usually got the output a few seconds later (only if I didn't use this too often. ALL CAPS was not considered "shouting" because there were no lowercase letters available in the system). The message was sent by punching a card with the message command and running it trough the card reader.

[n5bb]

My answer depends on what is meant by “email” to differentiate it from other electronic messaging systems. In mid-1969 (while I was in high school) I became a licensed Amateur Radio operator. Amateur Radio (ham) operators developed radio networks before 1920 which used Morse Code (CW) to electronically (over radio frequencies, mainly between 3.5 and 15 MHz) transfer short messages which looked similar to landline telegrams. These radiogram messages became standardized, and include a tracking message number, body word check count, station and city of origin, origination date, and destination address (often a postal address, sometimes with a telephone number). Starting in 1970 I became very involved with originating, delivering, and transferring these radiogram messages. This is a store and forward system, with stations relaying messages through a hierarchical network organized by time zones in the US.

By the mid-1970’s I was also using an electromechanical Teletype machine at my house to send such electronic radiogram message. By the 1980’s I was using computers to assist in sending and receiving these messages via radio, including a system called AMTOR. I also used Amateur Radio packet radio systems.

I also used early BBS systems reachable via phone lines (using modems) in the early 1980’s. I think the first commercial email system I used was the Western Union Easylink system, although I also had an early Compuserve account. See news about Easylink here:
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/03/b...nk-outlay.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/31/b...k-feature.html

Bill

[Bamb0]

I guess a BBS was my first and then on the net USWESTMAIL was my first.....

Originally Posted by dryoldlime

Why not redo the survey and include CompuServe?

Well you can pick OTHER for that

[somdcomputerguy]

I ran a BBS for a few years, I started that project probably in 1989 or 90. RBBS-PC was the software I used. At the time I was real keen on using Telix, and I became part of the forum world. I remember a particular BBS that I visited and used frequently that had a dozen or so individual phone lines!

[webecedarian]

Hotmail. It was set up for me, against my vigorous protests that I didn't want email. I still have it, and I still think fondly of the guy who forced it on me.

Consequently, Hotmail has become my idea of approximately what a good email layout should be, and I'm never happy with anything else ... even though I'm not that happy with Hotmail, either.