Email is a technology that, like the telephone, had a huge impact on the way customers interact with businesses. In the old days, you had to go to the shop to complain about a product or service. Then came the telephone; now you could ask your questions or tell the guy who sold you something how shitty a product is from the comfort of home while petting your cat on your couch.

Still, you had to call businesses during their work hours. For many of us, the work hours we have are basically the same as the opening hours of businesses, which means that when you are done with your work it’s already too late to reach the businesses you want to talk to.

It is here that the creation of the email changes things. Email is something that took more than 50 years to become fully useable.

Email started to have a real impact only in the 1990s . But just to have a fun date to place in your next dinner party, let’s talk about the MIT’s CTSS mail command. This precursor to the email system that we use today was developed by a group of fun people named Pat Crisman, Glenda Schroeder, and Louis Pouzin. They created their system in 1965. The use of this system was pretty basic back then and wasn’t yet available to all customers. According to Wikipedia, “the proposed uses of the proto-email system were for communication from CTSS to notify users that files had been backed up, discussion between authors of CTSS commands, and communication from command authors to the CTSS manual editor.”

This article is part of the book "A Tiny History of Service Design, " a tiny two-hour read that goes through the historical events that created what Service Design is today.