E-mail Celebrates its 32nd Birthday: 5 Interesting Things You Never Knew

By Prarthito

| Published: Saturday, August 30, 2014, 14:31 [IST]

How often do you log into your e-mail account? We are guessing most people won't even keep track or count, since it's become such an integral thing in our life. Be it for office work, or be it your own personal use, a mail ID what you need to get all you mails at one single destination.

But what do we really know about the service we use so often? Thanks to mail clients such Gmail or Yahoo Mail, users are even intrigued to manage more than one mail IDs so as to keep a division between personal and official life.

E-mail Celebrates its 32nd Birthday: 5 Interesting Things To Know

For that matter, do you know who invented e-mail? Well, you need not head over to Wikipedia since the credit for that goes to an Indian American V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai who received the official recognition from the US government for becoming the inventor of the computer program for electronic mail system. This was back in August 30, 1982.

And after that, there was no looking back. Since the 1990s, electronic mail has successfully bypassed the requirement of a postman. And while the online media rages on about the development in social media services, an e-mail account still remains as integral as ever.

But what are the facts that made e-mail into a monster that it is today? What were the fine points behind it and what else perfected the service? We take a closer look.

#1

Ever wondered why spam mail is called, well, spam? Apparently, the term spam is widely thought to have originated from a certain Monty Python act where the word's numerous chantings gave birth to the word that we use everyday. Of course, it's now related to all mails that are nonsense. Check the video.

#2

How do you spell the mail? Is it e-mail, email, Email, E-Mail, E-mail or eMail? Interestingly, the answer is manifold. There will be a host of dictionaries and style guides that will tell you that to drop the hyphen in between. But we prefer to stick to Associated Press (for this instance) and prefer the hyphen. It looks comfortable that way.

#3

The first mail from space was sent back in 1991 when the crew of STS-43 Atlantis used Apple's previous AppleLink software on a Macintosh Portable to send over the following lines:

"Hello Earth! Greetings from the STS-43 Crew. This is the first AppleLink from space. Having a GREAT time, wish you were here... send cryo and RCS! Hasta la vista, baby... we'll be back!"

#4

There's a reason why mail clients constantly remind you to be a bit creative with you mail passwords. And if you are unimaginative in this regard, there's no point in making one. But when we are not, we suddenly fall under the "123456" password category, that's also the most common password of all time. Not too bright, is it?

#5

Talking about dysfunctional dads, nobody fits the bill good enough than our very own Homer Simpson. Simpson's e-mail address - [email protected] also came in the open via an episode (The Dad Who Knew Too Little, to be precise).

The mail saw active usage from a Simpsons writer who answered mails via that ID. But it was decommissioned after the weight of mails were too big. But then a few hackers started using the ID for their own malicious uses, delivering malware in the name of new episodes.