Glenda Schroeder is an American software engineer noted for implementing the first command-line user interface shell and publishing one of the earliest research papers describing electronic mail systems while working as a member of the staff at the MIT Computation Center in 1965.
[1][2] Early operating system command-line interfaces were implemented as part of resident monitor programs, and could not easily be replaced.
In 1964, MIT Computation Center staff member Louis Pouzin developed the RUNCOM tool for executing command scripts while allowing argument substitution.
[3] Pouzin returned to his native France in 1965, and Schroeder developed the first Multics shell with the assistance of an unnamed man from General Electric.
The idea to allow users to send messages between computers was developed later by Ray Tomlinson in 1971.