[hibbelig]

Thank you. I wonder: is FTP that old? I kind of thought UUCP predated FTP. My parent mentioned email possibly being a special mode of FTP.

_some poking around in Wikipedia_

Indeed, FTP is from 1971 and UUCP is from 1979. And the SMTP page describes that it all started as a mode in FTP.

[p_l]

SMTP evolved as replacement for older approaches which, at one point, involved using FTP to mangle mailboxes remotely. Not so much a special mode for FTP as essentially an "use of" FTP. Similar to how non-trivial amounts of Electronic Data Interchange in business happens over FTP(S) to this day.