Historical reason behind different line ending at different platforms

Question

Why did DOS/Windows and Mac decide to use \\r\\n and \\r for line ending instead of \\n? Was it just a result of trying to be \"different\" from Unix?

And now that M

Answer 1

It's interesting to note the CRLF is pretty much the internet standard. That is, pretty much every standard internet protocol that is line oriented uses CRLF. SMTP, POP, IMAP, NNTP, etc.. The body of email consists of lines terminated by CRLF.