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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."
Which he didn't. The ancestor of the mail systems used on the Internet today was the mail command from the original versions of Unix, way back around 1971 or so. This guy is either a lunatic or a liar, but the one thing he isn't is the inventor of email.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
CTSS had email before UNIX did - 1964, if I recall.
From TFA: VA Shiva Ayyadurai claims is to have created the first "graphical front end for an electronic mail system", and was the first to copyright the term "EMAIL".
It is the craziness of the mass media that translates a copyright filing as "Invention".
Thirty four characters live here.
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.