The earliest article I was able to find that referenced electronic mail was from April 1960. The article was "The American Archivist" and I found it on JStor. It only mentions electronic mail once, but it says that Washington and another city will be testing email. It also talks about the cost benefits of sending mail electronically over using the post office.
In other articles I found more abstract ideas on how mail would be delivered. In the article from the Chicago Tribune from 1976, it said that people would electronically send their documents and letters to the post office where they would make a physical copy and send it through the mail service. This idea includes the post office as a middle man which we do not have today.
The article from the LA Times (1976) says that email will be used for business aspects such as billing, making orders, and sending invoices. This article views it as a control society tool, making business production faster. It does not factor the social use of email, which is its primary use today.
This articles viewed the technology in a business setting. They did not consider the use to connect with people outside of work. Also, none of them used the terms "e-mail" or "email." Articles that did use these modern phrasings are dated around 1990.
The idea of the technology, to send mail to others via electronic technology, remained the same throughout time. However, the thought of who was using it differed from being a business technology to being a home technology.
Lipari, Joanna. "Arthur C. Clarke." Film Comment 20.6 (1984): 62,63,80. ProQuest. Web. 20 Oct. 2013.
"Mailman of Future may be Electronic." Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File): 1. Oct 13 1976. ProQuest. Web. 20 Oct. 2013 .
http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.library.wisc.edu/journals/american_annals_of_the_deaf/summary/v128/128.5.gibbs.html
Problems While Searching
While doing my search, I found that there was often typos in either the original text or the abstract. One of these articles was "American Clerk unsienes" from 1856. The word "smail" was typed instead of "small." The person who wrote the abstract typed "email." I found this typo multiple times, which extended my time searching. Even when I refined my search dates to "after 1960" I still found articles with this typo. I had to refine the search because many of the articles I was getting did not have "email" anywhere in the article. So I refined the search to the years around the time that email was being invented. I also found that I needed to type in "electronic mail" in order to get the older articles.
Below are the articles I found.
Work Cited
The American Archivist , Vol. 23, No. 2 (Apr., 1960), pp. 211-236
"Foresee Overnight Mail Delivery Via Computers." Chicago Tribune (1963-Current file): 2. Jun 20 1976. ProQuest. Web. 20 Oct. 2013 .
By VICTOR K McELHENYThe New,York Times. "Citibank Uses Minis to Cut Maxi Tasks into Little Packages." New York Times (1923-Current file): 2. Feb 13 1977. ProQuest. Web. 20 Oct. 2013 .
1 comment:
I find it very interesting that your search was burdened by misspellings. That struck me as odd, to see such a widespread typo being made in so many different instances. Besides that, the initial idea still including the post office seems so typical of these kinds of things. Before we can start using technologies of the future, we have to see them through the lense we have today.
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