Inventions & Discoveries · Communication and computing

Email

1965 · 20th century · Also known as e-mail, electronic mail

Email, or electronic mail, is a method of sending and receiving digital messages over a computer network, on a store-and-forward model in which servers accept, forward, deliver and store messages. Messaging between users of the same computer became possible with time-sharing in the early 1960s, with a notable implementation in MIT's CTSS project in 1965. In 1971 the first network mail was sent over the ARPANET, introducing addresses with the @ symbol for the user's system; the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol was implemented on the ARPANET in 1983, and after 1995 SMTP, POP3 and IMAP became the standard.

Email
Image: AlexanderVanLoon · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

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First known
1965
Where
MIT

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Cite this entry
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). Email. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/email
MLA
“Email.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/email. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “Email.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/email.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Email’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/email (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻