How does e-mail work?

Well, school is out and I have had more important things to do than researching this topic, so I am warning you, I am just shooting from the hip here. But all the same, I did read something about this at one point. So here it is.

First a little history. E-mail was one of the first things on the internet. In fact the internet was developed with e-mail in mind. Of course those computer geeks working on the project referred to it as a document transfer program, that way the could get paid for working on it at work, instead being forced to work on it out of their home in their mothers basements. This was roughly 1972.

The obvious next question is why did they want e-mail in the first place. Well, it is because everyone likes to get mail. Even bills at least show that we are liked, even if we are being used for our money. But these nerds did not get mail. Living with their parents they got no bills. Their other nerdy friends were afraid to go out in the sun to walk to the mail box to send off a letter. So, they needed a forum where they could get mail with out leaving their computer. One of the most sublime hopes for this was to meet girls. These nerds were smart people and knew that statistically there must be a girl out there who would find them hot.

This can be seen in some of the early names of e-mail programs. Names like Hotmail (subtlety was not their strong point at first), NetZero (Collective number of dates they had been on in the previous 5 years), Juno (likening Alaskan weather to the cold female reception they received), or Yahoo (one of them got a date).

So now that you know the history of e-mail I can tell you how it works. E-mail is just a text file send over the network as a bunch of 1's and 0's. The computer then reads the numbers and forms words and stuff for you to read. Encrypted e-mail uses roman numerals instead of the Arabic numbers.

I hope that helps.

Note: The symbol "@" has no official name. "?!" does, it is called an interrobang. Seriously.

Note 2: Don't even get me started on why people start blogs.