Who invented email?
AI-drafted · awaiting admin review
Did V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, born in Mumbai, invent email in 1978?
Earlier elsewhereTechnology & engineering
Indian claim
V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai says that as a 14-year-old in New Jersey in 1978 he wrote a program called 'EMAIL' with inbox, outbox, folders and attachments, and so invented email. He registered a US copyright for the program's code in 1982.
Evidence for the Indian claim
- Ayyadurai's 1978–1982 program and its copyright are real, and the Smithsonian collected some of his materials in 2012.
Commonly credited to
Historians of computing date electronic mail to time-sharing systems such as MIT's CTSS (c. 1965), and credit Ray Tomlinson with sending the first network email between two computers on ARPANET in 1971, using the @ sign.
Evidence for the other claim
- Messages between users and networked email with @ addresses existed years before 1978.
- A copyright protects a program's text, not the idea of email; the Smithsonian and the Washington Post later clarified that he did not invent email.
- SIGCIS, the society of historians of computing, has rejected the claim.
What historians and scientists say
Ayyadurai wrote an early office email program, but email itself existed earlier. Most historians credit its beginnings to 1960s time-sharing systems and Tomlinson's 1971 network email.