mscorlib.dll & System.dll

Question

Why did MS originally make the decision to maintain these two separate core libs? Maybe they had some scalability issue in mind, but nowadays I never see an application, of

Answer 1

The mentioned native/managed thing sounds plausible, but I'm still not entirely convinced. In any case, MS seems to view mscorlib.dll as the core lib needed for the system, while System.dll contains the core functionality for programmers - which also sounds good.

I've just emailed this same question to the BCL team. If anyone can answer... When (if?) I receive an answer, I'll post it here. Thanks for the answers so far!