BlitzMail was an
e-mail
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
system used at
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...
in
Hanover, New Hampshire
Hanover is a town located along the Connecticut River in Grafton County, New Hampshire, United States. As of the 2020 census, its population was 11,870. The town is home to the Ivy League university Dartmouth College, the U.S. Army Corps of Eng ...
, United States. It was one of the earliest e-mail server/client packages. Use of BlitzMail ended in 2011, in favor of a Microsoft suite of email/online collaboration programs.
History
BlitzMail was developed by Dartmouth in 1987 and went live in the summer of 1988.
The name ''BlitzMail'' started as a joke among its programmers, as it had to be developed quickly.
In 1991, when Dartmouth required every student to own a computer, the server code was updated to allow multiple servers to accommodate the heavy demand for the system. In 1993, the server was rewritten to support mail folders. In 1994, the client and server software was released for use outside of Dartmouth. Some non-Dartmouth BlitzMail deployments include Valley.Net, an
internet service provider
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...
in New England's Upper Valley region and, from 1991 to 2005,
Reed College
Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus in the Eastmoreland neighborhood, with Tudor-Gothic style architecture, and a forested canyon nature preserve at ...
in
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...
.
The first versions of the client ran only on the
Apple Macintosh
The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...
operating system. The client was ported to
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
around the time of Windows 3.1.
Dartmouth's Computing Services rolled out an updated BlitzMail client for
Mac OS X
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...
that featured encrypted client-server communications. Developed in May 2006 by computer science doctoral candidate Chris Masone, the software became available in late 2007. Version 2.9 for Mac OS X 10.3 was available beginning in October 2008.
Recent releases of the client have experimental support for rendering (but not composing)
HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
-based messages.
A project at
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center continued to use the Windows BlitzMail service, which was no longer being developed or supported.
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center BlitzMail servers were scheduled to be deactivated on October 1, 2012. A Microsoft suite developed by email/online program collaborators was released to fill in its role.
Dartmouth College
BlitzMail became the primary means of communication of all types on the Dartmouth College campus, between students, professors, and administrators. Hundreds of public terminals were located around campus, in libraries, dining halls, and academic buildings. In the mid-1990s, Mac Classic public terminals were commonly referred to as "Blitzcheckers." Additionally, "blitz" became used as a noun and verb, used the same way "email" might be.
While BlitzMail is no longer used, students as of 2020 still use "blitz" instead of "email."
Until the mid-2000s, largely due to poor cellular reception on campus, many students opted to use BlitzMail rather than cellular phones, but this trend decreased as service improved on campus. In 2006, students began checking blitz on their cell phones.
Client
The BlitzMail client was graphical, and ran on Windows and Macintosh computers. Several
Java
Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...
implementations exist, as well as web-based clients, such as NetBlitz and WebBlitz. The client has not had major updates since the late 1990s, with the exception of a port to
Mac OS X
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...
. The client does not officially support
HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
-based e-mail, dealing only in plaintext.
(HTML files are viewed as attachments.) There is unofficial support to allow HTML-based email to be opened within the client normally.
The program is portable for users. A user's mailbox, address book, and preferences are all stored on the server. Any user can log into any installation of the client and have full access to their data. After a user logs out, no data or personalization is stored on the local machine. This feature allows the use of the many public terminals.
BlitzMail also acted as a pseudo-
instant messaging
Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...
client.
Messages were processed by the server and delivered to the recipient almost immediately.
The program was integrated with the Dartmouth Name Directory (DND), allowing users to message any recipient with a Dartmouth email address by searching for their name.
Technical specifications
BlitzMail speaks its own protocol between client and server, meaning that only the BlitzMail client can utilize the full feature-set of the server.
Messages entering and leaving the BlitzMail domain are handled via
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages. User-level email clients typica ...
(SMTP). , patches were available that allowed clients to connect to a BlitzMail server via
POP3
In computing, the Post Office Protocol (POP) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. POP version 3 (POP3) is the version in common use, and along with IMAP the most common p ...
and
IMAP
In computing, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection. IMAP is defined by .
IMAP was designed with the goal of per ...
(with
SSL.) The client communicates to the server on
TCP ports 2151 and 1119 and the notification service runs on
UDP port 2154.
In 2002,
SpamAssassin
Apache SpamAssassin is a computer program used for anti-spam techniques, e-mail spam filtering. It uses a variety of spam-detection techniques, including Domain Name System, DNS and fuzzy checksum techniques, Bayesian spam filtering, Bayesian filt ...
functionality was added to BlitzMail. The DND server was also modified to allow
LDAP
The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP ) is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) network. Directory servi ...
lookups.
The BlitzMail and DND servers run on DEC
Unix
Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...
and many
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
flavors. The OS must support
POSIX
The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines both the system- and user-level application programming interf ...
threading or
Mach kernel
Mach () is a kernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University by Richard Rashid and Avie Tevanian to support operating system research, primarily distributed and parallel computing. Mach is often considered one of the earliest examples of a microke ...
-style cthreads. The server will run on systems with very low hardware requirements.
The BlitzMail servers have run on a variety of hardware at Dartmouth. In the early 1990s, the mail and DND servers ran on 25 MHz
NeXT
Next may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Film
* ''Next'' (1990 film), an animated short about William Shakespeare
* ''Next'' (2007 film), a sci-fi film starring Nicolas Cage
* '' Next: A Primer on Urban Painting'', a 2005 documentary film
Lit ...
cubes named after Santa Claus' reindeer. At the time, hundreds of sessions could be handled on each machine. Later, the servers were migrated to
DEC 3000 AXP Model 300s.
A
Python
Python may refer to:
Snakes
* Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia
** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia
* Python (mythology), a mythical serpent
Computing
* Python (pro ...
library
A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...
implementation called PyBlitz was released in 2006 by Michael Fromberger.
The BlitzMail client and server software were available under an
BSD-style (with ad clause) license.
References
External links
Wireless Networking at Dartmouth CollegeWebBlitz - A Web-Based BlitzMail client*
The BlitzMail Protocol
{{E-mail clients
Dartmouth College student life
Email clients
Computer-related introductions in 1988
Software using the BSD license