On 2024-02-21 01:43, Chris Torek wrote:
On Tue, Feb 20, 2024 at 8:42 AM Dragan Simic <dsimic@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I've never ever seen anyone referring to email headers as "TO", "CC"
or
"BCC". It's always referred to as "To", "Cc" and "Bcc".
I used some email system (back in the early 1980s) that did that. It
felt weird even then. I can't remember if it was some CSMail (CSNet)
or MH(Rand Mail Handler) version that did it.
That's interesting, it shows that different variants were used in the
very early days of email. Maybe even the all-lowercase "cc" and "bcc"
variants were used somewhere, at least because RFC2076 (better said,
the RFCs that predate it) specifies them.
Thus, "cc" stems from the old age of literal carbon copies ...
That's correct. However:
and "bcc" was seemingly coined when email took over.
"Blind Carbon Copies" predated email, but required adding the
notation separately, if it was to be added at all. (I'm just old enough
to remember using carbon copies myself, but not old enough to
know what Standard Office Practice was at that time.)
Thanks for the correction. You're right, I was lazy enough not to
check that blind carbon copies predate the age of email. [1]
I'm also old enough to remember the literal carbon copies, I even made
a few dozens of them myself on a mechanical typewriter. They usually
left me with dirty fingertips. :) Though, I'm also not old enough to
know what the common office practice was like back then.
Whether adding a "bcc" notation was common I don't know;
it seems it would be easier to leave it off if you made, say, one
original and a total of 2 copies, one "blinded".
(As your Wikipedia link notes, there was a practical limit to how
many carbon copies one could make in the first place.)
Exactly, it was the limitation of mechanical typewriters. Perhaps the
limit was around four or five carbon copies.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_carbon_copy
