Subject: Early ARPAnet Email (was Draft History of early ARPANET Part 3/3)
From: [email-masked] (Eric Werme USSG)
Date: 30 Dec 93 15:05:33 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.culture.internet,soc.history,alt.folklore.computers

I guess it's time for a new subject line.  I trimmed the newsgroups line, I
forgot to check it last time.

[email-masked] (Richard Kenner) writes:

>In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] writes:
>>RFC 542 does not mention MAIL or MLFL, and the first RFC I can find that
>>describes them is RFC 765 in 6/80 (and it describes a lot more that I never
>>heard of).  MAIL & MLFL were very much an afterthought, but Ed & I implemented
>>them almost immediately and within a week couldn't imagine life without them.

>I agree that MAIL and MLFL were an afterthought, but I don't think you have
>to go to RFC 765.  The protocol for mail headers was RFC 733.  It was
>superceded by RFC 822.

Forget that 6/80 date - my point was that MAIL and MLFL were alive and
well before I left CMU (7/74).

It's rather interesting how well and long MAIL & MLFL served the ARPAnet
as people had been exploring mail protocols well before FTP came into
general use.  The predecessor to RFC733 was RFC724 (7/77) which includes
some history:

              I.  PROBLEMS WITH ARPANET MESSAGE STANDARDS

     A.  BACKGROUND AND HISTORY

          Today's ARPA Network "mail" or "message" service  uses,  for
     its delivery mechanism, two special commands of the File Transfer
     Protocol.  Viewed from within the structure of  FTP,  the  entire
     message,  both header and text, is data for the FTP MAIL and MLFL
     commands.  This facility was added to the File Transfer  Protocol
     as  an  afterthought;  it was an interim solution to be used only
     until  a  separate  mail  transmission  protocol  was  specified.
     Several  versions of such a protocol have been proposed, but none
     has yet received general acceptance.   Meanwhile,  attempts  have
     been made to improve upon the original interim facility.

          As  message  service  subsystems  on  various  host  systems
     (especially  TENEX)  developed  to  the  point  where rudimentary
     parsing of incoming messages was being done, it became clear that
     it  would  be  desirable to standardize the format and content of
     the headers of messages transmitted between hosts using these FTP
     commands.   To this end, an ad hoc committee wrote RFC 561, which
     suggested a standard message header format.   The  committee  was
     unofficial,  so  it could not legislate a standard, it could only
     recommend.  However, the standard it suggested adequately met  an
     urgent need, and was generally adopted.

          Several  salient  points should be noted:

          1. RFC 561 defined the concept  of  a  message  header,  and
             specified  the  syntax which delimited it from the actual
             text of a message;

          2. It proposed a standard format for the  most  obvious  and
             most  urgently-needed header items: "From:", "Date:", and
             "Subject:";

          3. It proposed that a general standard syntax  be  used  for
             all other header items;

          4. RFC 561 is still, today, an unofficial standard,  adhered
             to by most because of its utility;

          5. Its syntax was designed to allow humans to read the  text
             easily,  without  the  aid  of special message processing
             systems.

          As message services grew in  sophistication,  the  need  for
     specific header items in RFC 561's "miscellaneous" category grew:
     "To:" and "cc:", especially, were  generated  and  recognized  by
     several  different  message  services.   However,  there  was  no
     specific standard for the syntax of the contents of these  items.
     The  message  service  subsystems on TENEX developed a particular
     format for these items; since more messages originated  from  the
     TENEX  hosts  on  the  Network  than  from any other type of host
     system, the TENEX format for these fields soon became a de  facto
     standard.   Message  service  subsystems  on TENEX began to parse
     these fields, expecting them to be in the TENEX-generated format.
     Message service subsystems on other hosts -- Multics, for example
     -- began to dabble with other formats  for  these  fields,  since
     there  was  no standard for them, only to receive complaints from
     users of  TENEX  message  service  subsystems  that  their  "non-
     standard"  message  headers  could not be parsed according to the
     (de facto) "standard" syntax.

          Recognizing that the time had come to  make  an  attempt  to
     standardize  the  additional header fields that had come into use
     since RFC 561 was published,  ARPA's  Message  Service  Committee
     chartered  a  small group in 1975 to develop a revised version of
     RFC 561 which would define the syntax of these additional message
     header  fields.   Several things should be noted about this small
     group of  people:  first,  they  were  TENEX-oriented;  when  the
     functionality  of  the  message  header  items  they  desired was
     matched by  the  functionality  of  an  already-existing  message
     header  item  of  the  TENEX message subsystems, they adopted the
     syntax used by the TENEX message subsystems.  Second, they  based
     additional  header  items  not  already  found  on  TENEX message
     subsystems on the deliberations of the Message Service Committee.
     Third,  they were not familiar with the procedure for publication
     of a document as a Network RFC.

          The document which this group produced,  labelled  RFC  680,
     "Message    Transmission   Protocol",   received   only   limited
     distribution.  Matters were further confused  because  its  title
     was  misleading, since it was not a protocol for the transmission
     of messages between ARPA Network hosts, but rather a standard for
     the format of messages transmitted via the standard File Transfer
     Protocol.    Some,   including  the  Message  Service  Committee,
     believed that RFC 680 became a Network Standard.   This  was  not
     strictly true, because it never received proper distribution, and
     it had never been "officially blessed" by anyone, to turn it from
     a  request  for  comments  into an accepted official ARPA Network
     standard document.  Reflecting this confusion over the status  of
     the  document  are  the  facts  that  the document DOES currently
     reside in the "official"  ARPANET  Protocol  Handbook,  and  most
     users and message system implementors remain unaware that this is
     so.

Various RFCs that may be interesting include the following.  Some are not at
gatekeeper.pa.dec.com, some are despite the NIC's "(Not online)" warning.

0095 Distribution of NWG/RFC's through the NIC. S.D. Crocker.
     Feb-04-1971. (Not online) (Obsoleted by RFC0155)

0155 ARPA Network mailing lists. J.B. North. May-01-1971. (Not online)
     (Obsoletes RFC0095) (Obsoleted by RFC0168)
[I suspect these are Snail-mail addresses....]

0196 Mail Box Protocol. R.W. Watson. Jul-20-1971. (Not online)
     (Obsoleted by RFC0221)
[This may also have nothing to do with Email, but given the overlap between
 authors in RFC221 and RFC561, maybe RFC196 does refer to Email.]

0278 Revision of the Mail Box Protocol. A.K. Bhushan, R.T. Braden, E.
     Harslem, J.F. Heafner, A.M. McKenzie, J.T. Melvin, R.L. Sundberg,
     R.W. Watson, J.E. White. Nov-17-1971. (Not online) (Obsoletes
     RFC0221)

0453 Meeting announcement to discuss a network mail system. M.D.
     Kudlick. Feb-07-1973. (Not online)

0475 FTP and network mail system. A.K. Bhushan. Mar-06-1973. (Not
     online)

0561 Standardizing network mail headers. A.K. Bhushan, K.T. Pogran,
     R.S. Tomlinson, J.E. White. Sep-05-1973. (Not online) (Updated by
     RFC0680)

0680 Message Transmission Protocol. T.H. Myer, D.A. Henderson.
     Apr-30-1975. (Not online) (Updates RFC0561)

0724 Proposed official standard for the format of ARPA Network
     messages. D. Crocker, K.T. Pogran, J. Vittal, D.A. Henderson.
     May-12-1977. (Not online) (Obsoleted by RFC0733)

0780 Mail Transfer Protocol. S. Sluizer, J.B. Postel. May-01-1981.
     (Not online) (Obsoletes RFC0772) (Obsoleted by RFC0788)

0788 Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. J.B. Postel. Nov-01-1981. (Not
     online) (Obsoletes RFC0780) (Obsoleted by RFC0821)

0821 Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. J.B. Postel. Aug-01-1982. (Format:
     TXT=124482 bytes) (Obsoletes RFC0788)

0822 Standard for the format of ARPA Internet text messages. D.
     Crocker. Aug-13-1982. (Format: TXT=109200 bytes) (Obsoletes RFC0733)
     (Updated by RFC1138, RFC1148)
-- 
Eric (Ric) Werme		| [email-masked]
Digital Equipment Corp.		| This space intentionally left blank.