Mark Crispin facts for kids
Mark Reed Crispin (born July 19, 1956, in Camden, New Jersey; died December 28, 2012, in Poulsbo, Washington) was a very important computer programmer. He is best known for inventing the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) in 1985. IMAP is a system that lets you check your email from different computers or devices without having to download all your messages.
He also wrote or helped write many official internet documents called RFCs. Mark Crispin was the main person behind UW IMAP, which is a key example of how the IMAP system works. He also created the MIX mail storage format.
Mark Crispin earned a degree in Technology and Society from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1977.
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His Work in Computing
Early Years at Stanford
From 1977 to 1988, Mark Crispin worked as a Systems Programmer at Stanford University. There, he helped develop important parts of the ARPANET. The ARPANET was an early version of the internet. He worked on the Network Control Program (NCP) for the WAITS operating system. An operating system is the main software that runs a computer.
He also wrote a famous document called RFC 748. This document is unique because it's the only one in the RFC list that says "note date of issue." He also created several versions of Telnet. Telnet is a program that lets you control a computer from a distance.
Focus on Email
In the early 1980s, Mark Crispin became very interested in electronic mail (email) systems. This became his main focus. He was the lead developer for the email system on the TOPS-20 computer at Stanford. It was at Stanford, between 1985 and 1988, that he first developed IMAP.
Developing IMAP at the University of Washington
From 1988 to 2008, Mark Crispin was a Software Engineer at the University of Washington. During this time, he did a lot of work to improve and make IMAP popular. He also built what became known as UW IMAP. In 2008, he created a new version of UW IMAP called Panda IMAP.
While at the University of Washington, Mark also helped create Pine. Pine was a simple and widely used email program for Unix computers. It was first launched in March 1992.
In 2005, he wrote another special document, RFC 4042. This was his second "April Fools' Day RFC." These are fun, non-serious documents released on April 1st. This one described new ways to encode text for older computers.
Later Work
In August 2008, Mark Crispin joined a company called Messaging Architects. He worked there as a Senior Software Engineer. He created a completely new IMAP server. This server was designed to store mail in a spread-out way. He also improved the MIX format to handle virtual mailboxes and extra information about emails.
His Passing
On November 19, 2012, it was announced that Mark Crispin was very ill. He passed away on December 28, 2012.
In April 2013, his old university, Stevens Institute of Technology, gave him a special award. He received the Distinguished Alumni Award in Science and Technology after his death.
See also
- List of programmers
