https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.101.18

From The Physiological Society Newsletter February, 1991. Edited by Alison Brading, Oxford. (This would be numbered zero in the current system)

The cost-free joys of email

As a recent convert to email I have the convert’s usual desire to persuade others of the benefits of joining the system. Before this fades I thought it worth the effort of an article for Alison’s newsletter, which I will probably have to post to her. Perhaps after reading this she will join herself!

As many will know email is a computer-to-computer system to enable people to communicate with each other internationally, nationally and locally. You need access to a suitable terminal (often a lab PC connected by a network to an institute’s central computers); you will need to register with your computer centre. I had to fill in 3 different forms and get one signed by my department head) and a mail name. Your mail name plus institute’s address is your personal email address. Mine, for example, is roger.thomas@bristol in the UK, or @uk.ac.bristol outside.

The mail name in effect is that of a virtual pigeon hole or ‘mailbox’ in the memory of a local computer. You look in Your mailbox from time to time using any suitable terminal, not necessarily yours, and your personal password. You can use the same terminal to reply, print out the message, or even forward it.

Email has two great advantages: high speed and zero cost. Its speed can approach that of a fax, while its cost is that of internal mail. It is easier to send than a fax, often faster, for example if the two fax machines are inaccessible, and free! (Have you heard about Bristol University’s lost £4.6 millions? I digress.) It’s easiest to send, but very hard to edit, something you type in directly. Email does have some problems, I admit.

Too few people have email addresses. Speed depends on the recipient looking in his mailbox reasonably often. The sender has to type the message in, or at least be able to load a file typed by someone else and send that. Both sender and receiver need some computer skills. The details depend on your local computer network’s email program, and in Bristol are due to be simplified soon. But it really takes very little time once you are used to it.

How easy is it to look in your mailbox? With my PC in DOS mode I first type kermit. Then c to connect to the network, Then I enter call mail. When prompted I type pyrct to log on, and then my six-letter password. That’s all.

Once connected to the email computer the procedure is Quite simple and mostly explained on screen. On connection mine displays the titles of the last 10 messages received, and brief notes on the various choices. To read a message you select its title with cursor keys and press return. To reply you type r, then return, then a title, then press return two or three times until the instruction ‘please enter message’ appears, then do so. Finally type a full stop at the start of a line, then return twice, and the message is sent! lt needs more steps to send a file, but they are quite easy to learn. An unformatted text-file is harder to send than a message typed into email directly, but easier to edit.

Hardest to handle are binary files, such as a TIFF file from scanned artwork, or a program, or a formatted word- processor file, which can be sent after conversion to ascii coding. (If you have an IBM PC or clone I can send you, courtesy of Mike Rickard, without whose help I’d never have learnt to use email, a BASIC program to decode coded file conversion programs, with all you need to code and decode binary files. lf you’d like me to send you these please ask, but only via email!)

Is electronic mail really free to people in the academic system, and if so who pays? Laurie Burbridge, Deputy Director of our Computer Centre, confirms that it is free. Via email (!) he tells me that all email to other U.K. Universities goes over a national network called JANET.

This is centrally funded by the D.E.S. via the Computer Board and there is no cost to the user at all. It is one of those services which is genuinely free, and the best analogy would be with making an internal telephone call. The same is true of email sent to other Universities in North America, Europe and many other countries world-wide – alI available at no cost whatsoever. The disadvantage with international email is that the addressing conventions are rather bizarre, but this is only a problem the first time you want to contact a colleague in, say, University of Utah.

Costs are, however, incurred if you wish to send email to any user who is not connected to JANET or one of the international academic networks.

RC Thomas,14 January 1991