This limitation is not necessary. Even a relatively unsophisticated computer user has
little trouble understanding the concept and utility of enclosing pictures in a mail
message, for example. This concept is easily extended to include virtually any other type
of digital data. Research systems, including Andrew [2], Diamond/Slate [5], and many
others, have demonstrated the feasability of much richer mail on top of RFC 822.
However, unlike other multimedia applications, electronic mail is critically dependent on
standardization, as the utililty of a "standalone" mail system would be very low. What
has been prominently missing, however, is format standards that would allow such
systems to interoperate. For example, each of the research prototype multimedia mail
systems allowed its users to send and receive images, but not in a format that would be
recognized by any of the other systems. The recognition of this problem led gradually to
a widespread consensus that a standardized format for multimedia mail exchange was
necessary. The format devised by the Internet community for this purpose became
known as MIME, the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, and is the subject of this
paper.