Jeremy Norman’sHistoryofInformation.com Exploring the History of Information and Media through Timelines
Jeremy Norman’s
A: Little Rock, Arkansas, United States
President Bill Clinton sending the first email sent by a U.S. President, from the home a friend in Arkansas.
On November 6, 1998 President Bill Clinton sent the first ever presidential email to senator and astronaut John Glenn aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. Clinton sent the email from the home of a friend in Arkansas using a Toshiba Satellite laptop computer that belonged to White House physician Robert Darling.
"Glenn, a US senator who in 1962 became the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth, was completing a nine-day mission on Discovery in November 1998 when he sent word that he wanted to email Clinton, who was at the time was visiting friends in his home state of Arkansas.
" 'This is certainly a first for me, writing to a president from space, and it may be a first for you in receiving an email direct from an orbiting spacecraft,' wrote Glenn, then 77.
"Clinton was keen to get the message, but when his staff couldn't readily find him a computer to do so, Darling stepped forward with his trusty Toshiba and his personal AOL email address.
" 'Hillary and I had a great time at the launch,' emailed Clinton, referring to Discovery's liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center a few days earlier.
" 'We are very proud of you and the entire crew, and a little jealous.'
"In an interview in 2000, Clinton said he never used email due to security concerns, but acknowledged emailing Glenn in space as well as some US marines and sailors at sea at Christmas.
"Prior to selling the laptop in 2000, Darling took care to keep the historic email exchange on its hard drive, and made a copy on its internal floppy drive, while deleting all other data. He also typed up a memo about the landmark email, saying Clinton 'seemed to really enjoy himself particularly when he pressed the 'send' key and realized that at that instant his message was traveling through cyberspace and into real space' " (http://artdaily.com/news/69523/Laptop-used-for-first-US-presidential-email-finds-a-buyer-#.U1KIW-ZdXSs, accessed 04-19-2014.) The article reproduced a photograph showing Clinton using the Toshiba Satellite laptop.
On April 17, 2014 the laptop that Clinton used to send the first presidential email sold for $60,667 at RR Auction in Boston.