TABLE OF CONTENTS Way back in the early 1980s computer users could send e-mail to each other through electronic BBSs with ASCII graphics and unencoded binary objects across 1,200-baud modems. And (with apologies to SNL's Old Man) we liked it that way no matter how painful it was or how long it took, and we were grateful for the technology!
By the time I finally switched from the ASCII communications I had used in my younger days to the e-mail client/server graphic's revolution e-mail of PCs and workstations, I could send embedded graphics, attachments, and binary transfer music and even video through e-mail. I also found (while transferring my ASCII e-mail to TK50 tape) that it took me 10 years of e-mail correspondence and daily use to have created a scant 1MB of data (using English as a communication protocol).
As I filled and filled the two-thirds loaded floppy disk (after changing my mind about the 95MB TK50) with 10 years worth of e-mail history, I received my first real attachment from someone at DEC via the new client/server graphics interface to my shiny new DEC 320p laptop computer.
I marveled that the 12 PowerPoint slides that had been attached to the message (the text of which was written in MS Word) were 1.5MB of data they wouldn't even fit on the $10 1.44MB floppy disk I had just filled with the last ten years of history.
How had I ever managed without the ability to send graphics to everyone...
