I also remember those dark days of having to use those temperamental and brittle email forms. I also remember how the turn around time was measured in days. Better hope you didn’t make any mistakes!
My first few domain names were registered in 1995 when the turn-around time on the email template was about three weeks. I barely missed registering kl.com. There was a minor error on my template (name servers). Three weeks later I got the error message and immediately resubmitted but someone else had also submitted a registration in the meantime and theirs was processed before mine. I had to settle for kl.net.
I can't be the only one that remembers the (free) email robot that would assign domains in the early 90s. And I don't know Postel.