MIME stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. It is the official Internet standard that defines the way that multimedia objects are labelled, compounded, and encoded for transport over the Internet. Ned Freed and I led the specification of MIME.

At that time, I was a researcher and developer of multimedia email tools, and because of this I can claim to have sent out the first real MIME message. At the time, I was working for Bellcore in New Jersey, where I sang with the Bellcore chorus (the "Dial Tones") and in an all-Bellcore barbershop quartet (the "Telephone Chords"). On March 11, 1992, I sent out this message, more or less:

The Telephone Chords, 1992 John Lamb, bass                                  Michael Littman, lead                                  David Braun, baritone                                  NSB, tenor

Message-Id: <Edjbh9O0M2YtQL5uct@thumper.bellcore.com> Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1992 16:27:37 -0500 (EST) From: Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb> Mime-Version: 1.0 To: ietf-822@...., info-metamail@.... Subject: Barbershop MIME Those of you not running MIME-compliant mail readers won't get a lot out of this, nor will those without ftp access to the Internet, but for the lucky few.... Here are the infamous Telephone Chords, the world's premier (=only) all-Bellcore barbershop quartet, singing about MIME. Note that because the "message/external-body" MIME construct is used, this whole message is only about 3000 bytes -- at least, until you start reading it. :-) (To the tune of "Let Me Call You Sweetheart") Let me send you email if you have the time Let me sing you email now that we have MIME You have lots of bandwidth, I have lots of bits Let's use MIME for email, plain text is the pits! No audio? Try clicking here.