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Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by watersb on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @03:10PM (#24780342)
Friend at Yale was a bang-path email relay in 1987. Can't remember the structure, the actual address or how it worked.
Re:2.1M of the oldest Usenet posts are now online for anyone... by markedathome on Thursday October 15, 2020 @04:45AM (#24786289)
hu hum...digs out "Managing UUCP and Usenet" by Tim O'Reilly and Grace Todino, revised 1994.

p293 " ! Should only be used when sending via UUCP. This should be the only special character in the address (called a path). The path indicates each site through which mail will be routed, starting at the left and going towards the right. Mixing ! with @ is not considered good. That is, use:

uunet!ucbvax.berkeley.edu.edu!smith

not:

[email protected]"

In other words because UUCP was dialup and long distance expensive, email was routed through specific known hosts, which is why sometimes people ended up with long bangpathed addresses.