The Official MCI Mail Blog !

The PEN Newsletter

With this posting we're initiated an effort to republish the complete run of Gary Oppenheimer's Periodic Electronic Newsletter (PEN).

PEN was written and published between 1985 and 1996 by Gary Oppenheimer of Oppenheimer Software. Oppenheimer Software was an early and long time sales agent for MCI's public electronic mail service MCI Mail.

Periodic Electronic Newsletter
By Gary Oppenheimer
(PEN editions currently available: Oct 1985 - Nov. 1987, No. 1-15.)

Gary started PEN as a vehicle to to inform and educate his customers. Over an eleven year span of time Gary wrote on topics as mundane and diverse as the difference between the Basic and Advanced services (on MCI Mail), how to send and receive Telex messages via MCI Mail, EMS and X.400 addressing, and MCI Mail Global Access.

Keep in mind that PEN was written during the 1980s and early 1990s -- at a time when most people had never even heard of electronic mail!

On a side note, PEN is one of the first, if not the first, newsletter to be distributed via e-mail.

We hope you enjoy taking a trip back in time with the Periodic Electronic Newsletter.

A footnote:
PEN has been republished on the Scribd website. To access the PEN collection just click on the image above, or the hyperlink under the image.

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Date: Mon Apr 01, 2013 08:42 am EDT
From: The MCI Mail Blogger / MCI ID: 309-4996
TO: * You / MCI ID: 111-1111
Subject: The MCI Mail Blog
Message Id: 92080317014229/0003094996N53EM

This blog is dedicated to those people who worked tirelessly to design, build, code, market, sell, support, and operate the electronic mail service known as MCI Mail.

The MCI Mail service was formally launched by MCI's Chairman and founder Bill McGowan, in Washington, DC on September 27, 1983 -- and it was decommissioned, after almost 20 years of service, on June 30, 2003.

This blog was created to collect and share the history of what was MCI Mail - one of the first commercial e-mail services in the United States.

If you were involved with the MCI Mail product over the years please consider helping us to preserve the history of MCI Mail.

You can do this by,

(a) Helping to write and edit the MCI Mail entry on Wikipedia; and/or

(b) Sharing some of your memories via this blog.

We're looking for historic material, i.e.-- images, written memories, stories, "historic" documents and e-mails from MCI Mail's history.

If you wish to contribute material to the MCI Mail blog please send an e-mail to contact listed under the "View my complete profile" hyperlink - on the right - and we'll be in touch.

Thanks!
Command: ex

The 3 original MCI Mail TV advertisements

A Footnote:
The videos you see above were sourced from a VHS cassette (½ inch magnetic tape) that was originally produced in 1984 for the MCI Mail sales organization. The image quality is rather poor because the actual video tape is now over 25 years old, and consumer VHS magnetic tape normally starts to degrade within 10-25 years.

If anyone happens to have a copy of the broadcast/studio tape of these ads (which was probably recorded on 1-inch tape) please let us know.

Also - thanks go out to Kathy in Chicago for making it possible for us to post these ads on YouTube. It was her tape that we used as the source of the ads.

MCI Mail Open its Print Site in Brussels - 1/7/1985

On January 7, 1985 MCI introduced MCI Mail hard copy delivery via its first international print site in Brussels, Belgium. To honor this event, this limited edition First Day Cover was created by MCI's local partner on the project, Régie des Postes (the Belgian national postal authority.)

The service allowed an MCI Mail electronic mail service to sent messages via MCI's print site in Brussels for onward delivery via courier or postal services.

At the time, in 1985, this service was rather revolutionary since it allowed anyone who had a desktop computer and an MCI Mail account to deliver a high quality letter overnight to Europe. This was in the days before the commercial Internet, before the wide spread use of facsimile machines, and at a time when telex was still widely used to transmit real-time text-based written communications.

MCI Mail on the Wayback Machine

Here's a listing of archived MCI Mail related web pages,
and other stuff, from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

Prices and Services Guide (PDF) - 02/1996

The MCI Mail Glossary - ca. 1998

Communication Software by Pete MacLean - ca. 2002

The Beginnning of the End - 02/2003

Legally Approved Disconnect Letter for MCI Mail - 05/2003

Also, here's a "3 dimensional index" of mcimail.com
(for the period January 13, 1997 - August 7, 2003)

A Selection of News Clips

"Remembering MCI Mail"
Wade-Hahn Chan (February 26, 2007) Federal Computer Week

"MCI to Slash Service Prices"
(January 18, 1989) The New York Times

"Sending a Telex from Your Desk"
Peter H. Lewis (August 14, 1988) The New York Times

"MCI Mail to link with Compuserve"
(February 23, 1986) The New York Times

"Relief Is In Sight"
William F. Buckley Jr. (January 14, 1984)
Universal Press Syndicate

"MCI Mail Changes The Nature Of Letters"
L. R. Shannon (November 9, 1983) The New York Times

"MCI Plan to Deliver Messages"
(September 23, 1983) The New York Times