Results: The History of News & Communication *Part Ninety-Two* Electronic Mail & Network Communications

BBN's Ray Tomlinson introduces network email. The Internet Working Group (INWG) forms to address need for establishing standard protocols. Ray also made the decision to use the "@" symbol to separate the user name from the computer name (which later on became the domain name). Did you know the most common use of the "@" symbol was to indicate the price of something 12 donuts@ $1 =$12 a dozen?

1978 was the year that brought the first unsolicited commercial email message (later known as spam), sent out to 400 California Arpanet users by Gary Thuerk. Are you surprised that the first SPAM message was very successful as well as annoying, resulting in $12 Million dollars in Sales, from 40 Visitors out of 400 targeted with the message. SPAM messages have become very prevalent online. Do you respond to SPAM messages?

1982: The first emoticon - While many people credit Kevin MacKenzie with the invention of the emoticon in 1979, it was Scott Fahlman in 1982 who proposed using :-) after a joke, rather than the original -) proposed by MacKenzie. {A nod to Karlywood and her wink} The modern emoticon was born. Were you aware of the origin of emoticons?

The first major malicious internet-based attack was launched. One of the first major Internet worms was released in 1988. Referred to as "The Morris Worm", it was written by Robert Tappan Morris and caused major interruptions across large parts of the Internet. The damage caused was estimated to cost in the range of $100K to as much as $10 Million. It took several days to resolve all the disruptions and problems it caused in as many as 2,000 - 6,000 systems. Morris was found guilty of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, he was fined, and placed under three years probation and an order to complete 400 hours of community service. Do you think his sentence was sufficient for his Malicious Computer Attack?

In 1989: AOL is launched when Apple pulled out of the AppleLink program in 1989, the project was renamed and America Online was born. AOL later made the Internet popular amongst the average internet users. Do you remember the Voice Alert "You've Got Mail" ?