Happy E-Mailday! Useful knowledge on the 40th birthday of the first German e-mail

Die E-Mail ist der Veteran unter den Kommunikationsmedien im Internet. Unnüztes Wissen gibt es hier. Foto: Bild: AdobeFirefly – Patricia Bonaudo | karlsruhe.digital / KI-generiert

WhatsApp, Instagram and co. or not – it is the communication tool of our time: email. More than 350 billion emails are sent every day, an impressive figure that speaks for itself. What probably only a few people know: The first e-mail in Germany was received in Karlsruhe.
On August 3, 1984, an incredible 40 years ago, it arrived at what was then the University of Karlsruhe (TH), now the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). If you would like to find out more about the history of the first German Internet e-mail and why it is not quite right to call it the first German e-mail, read on here. Useful knowledge about e-mail can be found here.

The history of the @ sign

The @ sign already existed as an old cast lead sign, long before the World Wide Web, and was used in the meantime to mark discounted goods. The @ sign was developed in 1971 by programmers, presumably by the US technician Ray Tomlinson (1942-2016), at Bolt Beraneck and Newmann (BBN), USA, as The @ sign was chosen as the reference character for the first email user agent (email client) because it was present on the keyboards of English typewriters – and therefore also on the first computer keyboards – but had no known meaning or significance.

Lots of e-mails

According to Statista (citing the Radicati Group: Email Statistics Report, 2022-2026), around 347.3 billion emails will be sent and received worldwide this year.

Even more figures

  • There are around 4.3 billion email users worldwide.
  • More than 60% of all emails are opened on mobile devices.
  • The average open rate across all sectors is 17.61% with a click rate of 8.74% and a bounce rate of 10.64%.
  • More than 90% of people between 15 and 64 use e-mail.
  • 75% of all employees prefer e-mail as a means of communication.
  • On average, everyone checks their emails 15 times a day.

SPAMSPAMSPAMSPAMSPAM

“Spam” is a can of spiced pork and ham. The use of “spam” for emails has its origins in a sketch by the English comedians Monty Python. In total, the word “spam” appears more than 120 times in the three-minute sketch. From this mass repetition of the same term in a short space of time, Usenet users also adopted the word for their newsgroups, which have a similar function to a mailing list. Later, the term was also applied to Internet media. And to cement its place in our common parlance, it was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 1998 as a term for unsolicited messages.

E-mail giants

Apple was the most widespread mail provider in 2023 with a 58% market share. It is closely followed by Gmail with 30% market share. Gmail is technically the greenhorn among the major providers. In 2004, Gmail entered the market against some already established companies. Hotmail (now Outlook) was launched in 1996, Yahoo Mail came onto the market in 1997 and Apple Mail started in 2001.

Love worms

What a technological Armageddon! In 2000, the ILOVEYOU worm caused quite a stir. It was a computer virus that infected millions of computers worldwide and spread like wildfire – all thanks to a seemingly harmless email with the title “ILOVEYOU” and an attachment! As soon as you opened the attachment, the worm began to spread through your system. It overwrote random files and sent a copy of itself to every email address it could find. The result? An impressive number of over 10 million infected PCs worldwide!

Spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam.
Photo: Image: AdobeFirefly - Patricia Bonaudo | karlsruhe.digital / AI-generated
Spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam spam. Photo: AdobeFirefly – Patricia Bonaudo | karlsruhe.digital / AI-generated

More spam!

Being the most famous software billionaire also has its downsides. Bill Gates is the lucky recipient of more than 4 million emails a day, most of which are said to be spam. So if you’re frustrated by the number of spam emails you receive every day, count yourself lucky, because at least you’re not Bill Gates. [Quelle]

And even more spam!

Gary Thuerk is said to have sent the very first spam mail, after lunch on May 3, 1978. He worked for the Digital Equipment Corporation and sent the first spam mail to 397 e-mail accounts on the ARPANET of the United States Department of Defense. He wanted to sell computers with the mass mailing and, according to his own account, made twelve million dollars. Immediately after the mail was sent, the recipients complained about his behavior. A representative of Arpanet also called him later. Thuerk had to promise him never to do anything like that again. [Quelle]

Email checking causes stress

The average email user checks their email around 15 times a day. However, researchers at the University of British Columbia found that people who reduced this number to three times a day were significantly less stressed. They also felt that they were able to get much more done during the day. This is not surprising when you consider that switching between tasks involves a great deal of cognitive effort: it can take up to 15 minutes to be fully operational again after checking your emails.

E-mail, e-mail or e-mail?

The question of how emails are written is often asked, as the abbreviation “email” comes from the English language. It stands for “electronic mail”. According to German spelling, “E-Mail” is the only correct spelling.
Other attached words are also joined with a hyphen, such as “E-Mail-Adresse”.
However, two spellings are permitted for the verb: e-mailen and emailen.

Featured photo: E-mail is the veteran among the communication media on the Internet. Unneeded knowledge can be found here. Photo: AdobeFirefly – Patricia Bonaudo | karlsruhe.digital / AI-generated