Mystery solved.
It's a mis-statement of something Ray Tomlinson said:
<http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/mistakes.html>
d/
On 1/8/2011 9:56 AM, Dave CROCKER wrote:
Folks,
Wikipedia's article on email includes the text:
The first email ever sent contained the letters "Qwertyuiop".
This is repeated in other articles on the net.
Seems like such a claim should be validated. I don't recall ever hearing about
it and would assume that it's incorrect, since I haven't seen any definitive
agreement on what the first email system was, nevermind what its first message
contained.
My understanding is that email was a feature of the first timesharing systems,
which puts the likely first message in the first half of the 1960s.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net