The History of email

The 70's

1971 - Computer Engineer Ray Tomlinson sends the first electronic mail message

1976 - Queen Elisabeth II becomes the first head of state to send an electronic mail message

1978 - The first electronically -sent advertisement goest out, over a network of government and university computers

1982 - The word "email" is first used

1982 - The first smiley "emoticon" is invented by Scott Fahlman

1989 - Radio man Elwood Edwards recoreds AOL's iconic "Welcome" , "File's done", "Goodbye", & "You've got mail!"

1997 - Microsoft Outlook is released

1997 - Microsoft buys Hotmail for about $400 million

1998 - The word "spam" is added to the Oxford English Dictionary

1998 - Warner Bros. releases "You've got mail" which tops $250 milion at the box office

1999 - A fraudulent email claiming that Bill Gates plans to share his wealth with internet users begins to circulate. It is forwarded by millions.

2003 - On an episode of "The Simpson's", Homer reveals his email adress, chunckylover53@aol.com

2003 - George W. Bush sings into law the CAN-SPAM Act, the US first national standards for sending commercial emails.

2004 - LOL and other internet acronyms are offcially recognized in the Oxford English Dictionary

2004 - FTC codifies email spam laws

2004 - Multimedia emails are introduced after the MMS World Congress in Vienna

2005 - SPF, the first technology that verifies email senders identities, is established

2007 - Google makes Gmail available to the public worldwide

2007 - Anti-phising security protocol DKIM is adopted by the Internet Engineering Task Force

2008 - Presidential candidate Barack Obama compiles a database of over 13 million email addresses

2011 - The Associated Press Stylebook changes "e-mail" to "email"