How Email Works

E-mail, which is short for electronic mail, is a way to exchange digital notes or letters. E-mails operate on a type of store-and-forward system, in which the e-mail server computer stores, forwards, and receives messages for its users.

To receive and read an e-mail, you need an e-mail client. Some examples of e-mail clients include Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, or Pegasus.

If you use a free e-mail service, the service usually provides an e-mail client on a webpage. For example, Hotmail and G-mail, created by Google, are free e-mail services that provide an e-mail client on a webpage.

All e-mail clients, no matter which specific one that you use, generally do the following four functions:

• They allow you to access an e-mail by clicking the title and then allow you to read the body of the e-mail.
• They arrange your messages by displaying the title of each e-mail and showing you who sent you the message, when they sent the message, and the size of the message.
• They allow you to create new messages and send them.
• They allows you to attach files or data to messages and send these messages.

Although other e-mail clients may have additional features, these are the four main services that each e-mail client provides.

Email Servers

Once you have an e-mail client that you use, you need an e-mail server to send your messages and to receive messages back to you. The e-mail client needs to connect to this e-mail server to function.

Although e-mail servers are frequently more complicated, a simple e-mail server would have a list of e-mail accounts. Each account would refer back to a specific user using a specific address such as 123@hotmail.com.

The server would also have a text file for each of the accounts that were on the list, and these files would be located in a directory on the server. When an individual composes a message, addresses it to a user, and presses send, the e-mail client connects to the server and passes the server the name of the individual who the message is addressed to as well as the body of the message. The server then puts this information together and adds them to the bottom of the text file.

Logging In

When you log into to read your e-mails, you are logging in to read the bottom of your text file in the server. When you log in, your e-mail client connects to the e-mail server.

It requests that the server send a copy of your text file. Then the server erases and resets your text file after it is sent to the e-mail client. The text file that is sent to your client is also saved on your computer.

The file is separated into different messages, and the client uses the word “from” to separate the file into the different messages. These messages are then shown to you, separated by the title of the e-mail. When you double-click on the title of an e-mail, your client locates the message from the text file and shows you the body of the message.

Although this is a simple way of explaining how e-mail works, in reality, the system is not much more complicated than this.

History of Email

E-mail has been around for decades. E-mails are actually fairly simple, they are only text messages. The first e-mail was sent in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson, an engineer. Prior to 1971, messages could only be sent to other users using a single machine.

Tomlinson realized that you could use the Internet to send messages to other users, and he realized the “@” symbol could designate different users from each other and provide an address for the message to be sent to. This was a breakthrough in technology.