https://thenetworkcollective.com/2018/06/hon-email-part-2/
In 1990, an unresolvable debate over how to expand email beyond ASCII text spawned two separate working groups and is a rare example of how staunchly competitive tech groups unintentionally ended up collaborating to create something important that went beyond the original objective. The result: multimedia email, according to M3AAWG Senior Technical Advisor Dave Crocker in part 2 of his Network Collective podcast on the history of email.