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MIT Lecturer Defends His Standing As Email Inventor
hapworth writes "IT professionals were recently outraged to hear that the Smithsonian acquired some code from MIT lecturer VA Shiva Ayyadurai who has convinced no less august pubs than Time Magazine and The Washington Post that he invented email. While objectors howl on forums and message boards, VA Shiva Ayyadurai spoke up today to defend his standing as email's creator, claiming he doesn't regret not patenting it because he doesn't believe in software patents."
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
If only the rest of the world saw it his way. If he did invent email, that is.
When I was in school, I invented all kinds of things!
Factoring, long division!
I'd love to test our Social Networking application we ran in college, long before this interweb thing came along, against some of the patents people are claiming now.
As for email, I've got junk from my Dad's Model 14 Teletype, with headers and all, which could certainly pass for early email. Back then it was passed between stations until intended recipient was expected to have received it - your TTY was always expected to be left on.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
When I got to MIT in 1979 email had been in use for a long time. Both " at " and "@" were in equal use on ITS to send mail over ARPAnet via NCP. I'm not sure what this guy is claiming about having invented email in 1980.
I think the invention of the Teleprinter and the Fax machine soon after got him beat. Modern e-mail requires IP based servers and DNS.
Life is not for the lazy.
Many DIFFERENT items go into a modern email system.
Tomlinson "invented" the practice of using the @ sign.
Ayyadurai may have been the first person to use the term "email".
But there is no evidence that he invented the concept of electronic messages between people.
Email is one of those things that becomes obvious once the tech comes into existence. Give someone a computer with the option of sending data back and forth and a whole slew of people will say "Send this Memo to EVERYONE" and thus Spam was born.
What is email? It isn't a protocol - you can send it over many, many protocols. It is a concept: The very idea of sending a text message by electronic means to be stored somewhere the recipient may access it for a non-realtime conversation. What is that, really? It's the telegraph. Computers made it much faster, cheaper and more accessible, but the real core of the idea is as old as the telegraph.
Unix Version 6, released in 1975, had the mail command.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Ayyadurai#Email_claims
1) He did not invent it.
2) He did copyright the term "EMAIL" in 1982.
3) But he doesn't believe in software patents.
Now he is trying to twist his "copyright on "EMAIL"" into "Invention of EMAIL" with nothing more than his own words.
Wake me up when Dennis Ritchie returns to whoop his undeserving ass...
Okay, this is kind of stupid, on his part.
It's true that RFC 822 came out after he claims to have invented email. It obsoleted RFC 733, where you find To, Cc, Bcc, and in fact much of what was (better-) formalized in 822. 1977. If November 1977 is insufficiently early, then 733 obsoleted 724, which was released in May of that year (and is basically a first attempt).
He didn't "invent" email. He implemented something that a lot of people were doing. Crocker et al. invented the format used for messages, as described in the series of RFCs 724 - 733 - 822. See rfc-editor.org for details.
Amy!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Digital_Network
http://jproc.ca/crypto/autodin.html
I managed a few Technical Control sites long ago. We could route normal telegrams on the system with a little creative address routing.
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
How this charlatan got a MIT gig is the real fraud.
You know what else ruined the joke? Not being funny.
"CTSS had mail and inter-user messaging in 1965. These facilities were useful in the initial construction of Multics. Multics provided mail and inter-user messaging between users on the same system as early as 1968. Extending mail on a single system to mail across the network was a development effort started in the early 70s that continued into the 1990s.
THVV wrote the first mail command for 645 Multics in 1968, imitating the CTSS MAIL command. "
Etc.
http://multicians.org/mx-net.html#tag22
See 3.3.2
hubhost!middlehost!edgehost!user@uucpgateway.somedomain.example.com
'nuff said.
Electronic mail was invented by me, can I get on TV for relatively little effort too? :0)
The purpose of existence is to make money.
And yet here he seems to have them: http://www.ptodirect.com/Results/Patents?query=PN/6718368
The guy in the sleeper car chewing watermelon, in "The Man Who Would Be King", invented e-mail. Well, guess what, I caught him stealing your watch!
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
wanker a friend of that bloated white whale carcass, Al Bore?
Why, this is an outrage! Of course this person invented email.
To even consider thinking otherwise ranks up there with the invention of the question mark* as one of the great invention misjustices of all time!
*which was actually invented some time in the 30s by Mr. Evil Snr.
Good grief - looks to me like somebody trying to re-write history.
Look at:
http://www.vashiva.com/inventing_email.asp
Got his own web site pumping himself.
Then:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Ayyadurai
A wiki page that many have said needs to be deleted.
I wonder who wrote that little work?
Maybe Big Brother can get him a job
working for the Thought Police!
www.effectiveelectrons.com "chips that work" Analog, RF, Mixed Signal
When the hell did Time and the Washington Post become "august" pubs???
But I'm fairly sure we started with message board symbolic links first, and file attachments, which is what we used it for.
Maybe the first spam used his system, but not the first Corriere Electronique as the French would say.
(On ARPA*NET since 1978 and internal mil systems circa 1982, my old slashdot account had 4 digits but I spaced the password and the email account was an old CIS one I can't remember the number of)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
He funded it, dip shiite. Electrons don't grow on trees.
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Everybody know's the when Al Gore was a congressman he invented the internet...
And while he was at it, Al Gore invented his namesake--algorithms!
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
This NYTArticle from April 28, 1957 says:
Mail Sped by Electronics Predicted by Summerfield; One-Day Delivery Sought Between Any 2 Cities --Many 'Ifs' in Plan ELECTRONIC MAIL SEEN IN A DECADE Senate to Study Bill Full Report Planned 'Pattern' for Country Fire From Two Sides Question of 'Intangibles'
WASHINGTON, April 27--The Post Office Department envisions a five-to-ten-year transition to the electronic age...
Say, isn't this the same guy who "invented" RFC 1149?
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
As it happens, I actually knew Shiva in high school (I was one year behind him in Livingston -- class of 1982; he was class of 1981). We lived about 1/4 mile apart, and took the same bus to and from school. We were both science/math geeks.
I do remember (not the details) the project he's talking about. We discussed it on the bus. He did indeed submit it to the Westinghouse Talent Search, and as I recall he got past the first round. It certainly was an interesting project for the time, and my recollection is that he designed it very well and he well deserved to advance. I don't know one way or the other whether he came up with it independently, but he most certainly didn't invent email.
It has been well over a decade since I last saw him.
As he says on his Web site, he's the "inventor of EMAIL".
He does not, however, say he's the inventor of email or e-mail or electronic mail, so I guess he means he's the inventor of a system named "EMAIL". the copyright he got was for a "COMPUTER PROGRAM FOR Electronic Mail System", which suggests that "EMAIL" was a program that implemented, err, umm, email.
He als says "Every software system needs a User's Manual, so did the world's first E-MAIL system. At that time, Shiva was everything on the project: software engineer, network manager, project manager, architect, quality assurance AND technical writer.", so maybe "the world's first E-MAIL system" was the first system that "handled it all" - ARPANET e-mail involved different mail user agents and mail transfer agents on different operating systems, so there wasn't a single "COMPUTER PROGRAM FOR Electronic Mail System".
Or not. A historical overview of the CTSS system, from its fiftieth anniversary, quotes Tom Van Vleck (also cited in another posting):
Reference 11 is to Van Vleck's The History of Electronic Mail (which mentions the copyrighting of "EMAIL" in a parenthetical note at the top of the page) and Errol Morris's New York Times Opinionator blog post "Did My Brother Invent E-Mail With Tom Van Vleck?" (my head asplode when I learned that Errol Morris was Noel Morris' brother).
The news article he cites says he "created an electronic mail system", which may well be the case. It doesn't say he created the first electronic mail system, and "created an electronic mail system" suggests that the notion of an "electronic mail system" wasn't a Shiny New Idea (and, in fact, it wasn't).
And, in fact, the article to which the "to defend his standing as email's creator" link takes you quotes him as saying "I did not claim that I created electronic communications," so at least give him credit for that.
I first used an email like system in 1980 on an IBM mainframe. I was referred to as mail, but not "email". I think at best he might be able to say he was the first to coin the silly term "email". I see no more reason to use the "e" as we don't refer to the network as "electronic". No doubt others might already be using words like "iMail" (Steve, is that you?) or "cmail" or "nmail".
Who cares, though. It all became worthless as soon as spam (all lower case) was invented a few days afterwards.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Source: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp
During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.
As Snopes.com points out (emphasis added), "Clearly, although Gore's phrasing might have been a bit clumsy (and perhaps self-serving), he was not claiming that he "invented" the Internet (in the sense of having designed or implemented it), but that he was responsible, in an economic and legislative sense, for fostering the development the technology that we now know as the Internet."
As someone else pointed out: was the telegraph really the first email? How closely does a system need to resemble what we currently know as "email" in order for it to really be "email"? If we were to identify the inventor of "modern" email, would that be Postel in 1982 with the RFC for SMTP (proposed in 1980), or someone earlier?
http://www.vashiva.com/
Talk about a self-aggrandizing asshat...
I was in Canada at the time. I don't care what you say. Our funding was from our country, and his help was invaluable.
Sit on it.
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coining a term isn't the same as inventing technology.
Another poster has found RFC196 as an early mailbox protocol in 1971, but the earliest variant of a recognizable mail format would be RFC561 from 1973, which gives a header format that would be recognizable to pretty much any modern mail client.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So how long did you stand in the rain for your 4s?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
There is politics and drama even in academia.
He most likely registered the mark EMAIL as a trademark. "Word" marks are always registered in all caps. They still apply to usage in other fonts and in lower case.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
His phrasing is what allows us to sound bite him like that. He phrased it very VERY poorly, enough so that his original message was distorted.
Good-bye
I am actually the author of all of Shakespeare's works.
I invented the automobile.
And the electric Can Opener.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The real beginning of email, in the sense of fully automatic message switching, was "Western Union Plan 55-A", introduced in 1948 and shut down in 1976. Imagine Sendmail, with paper tape punches and readers with bins between them as the buffers. Such systems handled most telegrams in the US for over 25 years.
There were message switching systems before that, but Plan 55-A was the first one that could forward a message from source to destination without human intervention at the switching points. It could even handle messages with multiple destination addresses.
Before that, there were teletypewriter exchanges, but they involved dialing up a connection directly between sender and receiver. They were basically telephone switches repurposed for teletypes. That's what TWX and Telex were. Those were automatic dial back to the early 1930s.
he can SucK MY MoTHeRFuCKING DICK
for god sakes, please read articles before they're posted to slashdot. he invented EMAIL, an email management system. he is not claiming that he invented electronic email, e.g., email.
Jeremy Kister
http://jeremy.kister.net./
Bah, I have a Galaxy Tab. It's a phone, a tablet, and an umbrella.
He must have been working with Al Gore when Al invented the Internet.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
good man!
the timeline on this guy's claims is way off base. we all know that al gore didn't even invent the internet until years after this.
I thought Steve Jobs invented e-mail.
Was shipped on 5.25" floppy disks.
I recall reading somewhere that the originator of email was looking at his VAX/VMS terminal and spotted the @ sign and arbitrarily decided to use that symbol for msg redirection. I understand that email was originally relayed using UUCP and the exclamation mark or bang character as in !machine1!machine2!machine3!user. If a machine didn't recognise the user then it relayed the msg to the next machine along. This was before they invented Internet Routers.
UUCP
AccountKiller
Hell, I could use PING to send a communications using timing inervals to convey a morse code message and my firewall to capture those ping timestamps, does that mean my firewall and PING are together a version of email ?! No! THat's crazy, Jesus christ, and those old arpanet shit wasn't email either. look.
apparently the claim is that he invented a UI for electronic mail and called it email. So technically he invented a software system that accomplished functionality that did not exist before. IF THAT IS TRUE, then, as a software engineer myself, I have to admit that constitutes an invention.
Additionally, in the vernacular today we use the term "email" to refer to just such systems - except for very technical uses of the word among engineers, most people think of it as a software system that ALSO integrates the functionality of composition of an message, the conveyance of such messages, and the receiving of such messages, as a total abstraction from RFC's and mail commands. When someon says "email" they think of the entire system, UI and all.
So I would dispute the invention of his system and UI, (show me an example of that prior to 1981) not the invention of protocols and mail senders, otherwise you sound like a bunch of retards whose lack of critical reading skills justifies the necessity to emphasize writing and communication classes for future computer scientists. You can't even extract from the text the specific assertions you're trying to debate about, but you're good enough to read requirements and build the software our economy depends on? Wtf?
no this is not a lunatic geek , it's bad journalism
*I* invented email three weeks ago! Haters gonna hate.
BU's home grown time sharing VPS (nee RAX) timesharing system had an email program called $mail created by Michael Krugman before 1978 (1975?). I know because I worked at the BU computing center at the time and used $mail. If I recall, it had CC capabilities, etc.
Like a good neighbor, fsck is there
But now it's a series of tubes.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I worked for Honeywell from 1977 to 1979 in a multi-company ARPA contract. We exchanged informaton with all the other developers around the country via email. I can see him claiming to have written a specific email system for a specific purpose, but he did not invent email.
fidonet ...
binklyterm
opus
SEADOG
FOSIL = FIDO OPEN STANDARD INTERFACE LAYER
echo mail
I can go on on and on
Go hunt for a clue.
Christopher
AKA Sherman of the Wayback Machine - 147/7 & 11 & 14
@ 1979 - 2012