The first issue of the VOGON News Service in an email sent on 3rd August 1981 from Richard De Morgan in Reading, England to his colleague Alan Blannin in Nashua, New Hampshire. It wasn’t called The VOGON News Service at this point but you can see that Richard sent the email from his account on the server node VOGON in the Digital network.

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From:	VOGON::DEMORGAN “Richard De Morgan” 3-AUG-1981 08:24:47.42
To:	KOALA::BLANNIN
CC:	
Subj:	some UK news

1. England won the 4th test match by 19 runs. The Australians required only
151 runs in their 2nd innings. The last five wickets were taken by Botham
for only 1 run.

2. 8th IRA hunger striker died. Set new record (73 days).

Cheers, Richard.

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The time in the email was the local time of arrival, i.e. New England time (5 hours behind UK time). For the first few years, Richard typed up and sent the main news during his lunchtime. However, once there were quite a few readers and distribution slowed down and readers in the UK and Europe weren’t getting it until the end of the day so he changed to submitting it early morning (UK time).