Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Smart host" in English language version.
The term 'smarthost' harks back to the days before SMTP was universal and DNS reasonably reliable: The idea was that you assumed that your own host probably wasn't as well-connected and capable as, say, the UCBVAX machine at Berkeley. So, you would configure your local outbound mail processes to lob all outgoing mail over to UCBVAX via batched, dialed-up UUCP, or SMTP, or whatever, trusting to UCBVAX to perform necessary DNS lookups and redeliver the mail. UCBVAX was, in that sense, dubbed a "smarthost" for your site, in the sense that it's smarter about DNS and mail connections than yours is.
