I’m not sure about specific events, but I think the main reason Base64 “won” is that it’s one of the binary encodings supported by MIME, and MIME took over.

So perhaps the question then becomes two-fold:

• Why did MIME pick Base64 over UUencode? Possibly because Base64 is actually more resistant than UUencode: it only uses alphanumeric characters plus two other characters to encode content (‘+’ and ‘/’ in MIME), and one character for padding (‘=’).
• Why did MIME become the dominant mail/news content wrapper? I guess it boils down to convenience, especially once most MUAs and news agents supported it (ah, the days of slrn and Forte Agent...).

I’m not sure about specific events, but I think the main reason Base64 “won” is that it’s one of the binary encodings supported by MIME, and MIME took over.

So perhaps the question then becomes two-fold:

• Why did MIME pick Base64 over uuencode? Possibly because Base64 is actually more resilient than uuencode: it only uses alphanumeric characters plus two other characters to encode content (+ and / in MIME), and one character for padding (=).
• Why did MIME become the dominant mail/news content wrapper? I guess it boils down to convenience, especially once most MUAs and news agents supported it (ah, the days of slrn and Forte Agent…).

I’m not sure about specific events, but I think the main reason Base64 “won” is that it’s one of the binary encodings supported by MIME, and MIME took over.

So perhaps the question then becomes two-fold:

• Why did MIME pick Base64 over UUencode? Possibly because Base64 is actually more resistant than UUencode: it only uses alphanumeric characters plus two other characters (‘+’ and ‘/’ in MIME).
• Why did MIME become the dominant mail/news content wrapper? I guess it boils down to convenience, especially once most MUAs and news agents supported it (ah, the days of slrn and Forte Agent...).

I’m not sure about specific events, but I think the main reason Base64 “won” is that it’s one of the binary encodings supported by MIME, and MIME took over.

So perhaps the question then becomes two-fold:

• Why did MIME pick Base64 over UUencode? Possibly because Base64 is actually more resistant than UUencode: it only uses alphanumeric characters plus two other characters to encode content (‘+’ and ‘/’ in MIME), and one character for padding (‘=’).
• Why did MIME become the dominant mail/news content wrapper? I guess it boils down to convenience, especially once most MUAs and news agents supported it (ah, the days of slrn and Forte Agent...).