Mr. John Vittal

A computer programmer who worked at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute, he was responsible for transforming the old email system into the highly user-friendly tool of today. MSG was the first modern email program. Shortly after the development of ARPANET and the Unix program, the first email program was developed. Since then there have been many successful attempts to upgrade the early email program to increase its functions and technology. He improved on the older version of email, called BANANARD, and later called the new program MSG. MSG has powerful features like message forwarding, a configurable interface, and an Answer command that automatically created properly addressed replies. To countless users, the Answer command was revolutionary. It resulted in an outburst of email use over a 6-month period. Another highlight is that email changed from just sending independent messages into having a real conversation.