based on History of Email and other articles
Go to IBM, DEC, ITU, AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, Blackberry, GMail, iCloud
Larry Breed at STSC in Maryland launched APL Mailbox using APL (A programming language) designed on an IBM System/360.
UC Berkeley Network in California released the Mail client for Unix written by Kurt Shoens on their DEC PDP-11 computer and distributed with the second Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) to educational institutions nationwide (and worldwide). It included support for aliases and distribution lists, forwarding, formatting messages, and accessing different mailboxes.
Computerized Bulletin Board System (CBBS) became a public dial-up BBS for home-built computers initially on the Intel 8080 CPU running the CP/M operating system.
Wang Laboratories introduced its Integrated Information Systems line on its minicomputers, incorporating the ability to attach digitised voice messages.
BITNET (Because It's There Network) launched at the City University of New York (CUNY) and Yale University, providing electronic mail services for educational institutions. It was based on IBM's VNET email system.
Digital Equipment Corporation launch ALL-IN-1, an office automation system including functionality in electronic messaging.
MCI Mail was a custom software application developed for MCI Communications Corporation by DEC (Digital Equipment Corp) to run on their VAX-11/780 superminicomputers and HP-3000 minicomputers coupled with HP Laser printers. MCI Mail also allowed subscribers to send regular postal mail (overnight) to non-subscribers. MCI Mail became in 1989 the first commercial public email service to cut across to the Internet. See below.
Prestel Mailbox service launched by the UK Post Office Telecommunications as Videotex that ran on TV and dumb terminals using X.25 protocols and offered private messaging. Launched in Australia in 1985 by Telecom Australia as Viatel. Later renamed Discovery 40 (for 40 character screens) and Discovery 80 (for 80 character screens), it only ever ran over dialup modems and was retired by Telstra ca 1993.
X.400 was published as a suite of ITU-T recommendations that defined the ITU-T Message Handling System (MHS). Mandated for government use worldwide in 1988 under GOSIP. Used particularly (and briefly) in the UK, Canada, and Australia. Promoted by major vendors (e.g. Microsoft) in 1989.
Microsoft Exchange Server up to version 5.0 (in May 97) came bundled with Microsoft Exchange Client as its mail client. Note that when Microsoft Office and Outlook 97 were released on Windows PCs in January 97, Exchange Client 5.0 was still in development, it was released in May 97 as a part of Exchange Server 5.0. In Exchange Server 5.5 (released in November 97) Exchange Client was removed and Microsoft Outlook became the only client, now available to Apple iMacs (with their release in 1998) as well as other hardware.
Note too that Windows 95, that launched in August 1995, had promoted its Inbox, Outbox and Sent Items as a universal Microsoft Exchange. A stripped-down version, having no support for Microsoft Exchange Server was renamed to Windows Messaging to avoid confusion and included with Windows 95 OSR2 in August 1996, Windows 98, and Windows NT 4 before being discontinued.
In October 1997 the desktop application was changed and renamed to Outlook Express and bundled with
Netscape
At the same time, Netscape released Netscape Communicator in 1997 with its email client, renamed as Netscape Messenger. In 1999, Netscape was purchased by its rival, AOL.
Launch of Hotmail
Hotmail service was founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith, and was one of the first webmail services on the Internet along with Four11's RocketMail (later Yahoo! Mail). Hotmail was commercially launched on July 4, 1996, symbolizing "freedom" from ISP-based email and the ability to access a user's inbox from anywhere in the world.
The limit for free storage was 2 MB. Hotmail was initially backed by venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. By December 1997, it reported more than 8½ million subscribers. Hotmail initially ran under the Solaris operating system for mail services and Apache web server software under FreeBSD Unix for web services, before being partly converted to Microsoft's products, using Windows Services for UNIX in the migration path.
Hotmail was then sold to Microsoft in December 1997 for a reported $400 million, and it joined the MSN group of services. Hotmail quickly rose in popularity as it was localized for different markets around the globe, and became the world's largest webmail service, with more than 30 million active members reported in February 1999. As mentioned before, Hotmail as a service ran on a mixture of FreeBSD and Solaris operating systems.
Mozilla Thunderbird was also launched in 2004, a free and open-source email client that ran on the desktop.
Apple's history with its Apple Mail app. It standardized in 2003 on the Mac as an alternative to Microsoft Outlook. With the release of the iPhone in 2007, MobileMe was launched in 2008 as a subscription based service. It was replaced by the free iCloud service (up to 5gb) which debuted in October 2011. iCloud integrated and improved upon MobileMe's features like Mail, Calendar, and Contacts, while adding automatic backups, photo and music syncing, and file storage, all integrated with the new iCloud.com web interface. MobileMe was officially shut down in June 2012.
Lastly, a comment about Australia and sending email back in 1990.
An alternative to SMTP for sending email, as mentioned earlier, was x.400 that was developed in the 1980s by the
** End of Page