A 14 Year Old Indian Boy Was The Actual Inventor of E-mail

Today, an Electronic Mail (E-mail) service is the most important technology we use to communicate online. It is the fastest way to send and receive messages, documents, Images and other stuff. As we know about a lot of inventors who played a big role in today’s technology, did it ever occurs you to know about the inventor of e-mail system? who did invent an e-mail system?

Who Is The Inventor of E-mail?

Indian-Boy-Inventor-of-email

An Indian boy named VA Shiva Ayyadurai invented email in 1978. When he was 7 years old, he left India with his family to live in the New Jersey, United states of America. He was studying at Livingston High School in New Jersey. When he became 14 years old,  he developed a full-scale emulation of the interoffice mail system. He named it an “E-mail” system. His E-mail system had all the functions of the interoffice mail system: Inbox, Folders, Outbox, Attachments, Memo, Address Book, etc. These features are now essential parts of every email system.

The Beginning

Indian Boy - Inventor of email

At the age of 14, he started working on the e-mail system for the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. He closely observed the things that are needed on the desktop of each secretary. He found out that Inbox, Folders, Outbox, Carbon Copy Paper, Drafts, Address Book, Paper Clips (for attachments), etc, are used every day to create and process incoming and outgoing mail.

The Inventor of E-mail

Shiva developed a computer program of more than 50,000 lines of code, which electronically replicated all the features of the interoffice mail system. It was an electronic version of the interoffice mail system. In 1982, on August 30, the US government officially recognized VA Shiva Ayyadurai as the inventor of E-mail by awarding him the first US Copyright for Email for his 1978 invention.

Inventor of e-mail - Certificate-Of-Copyright-Registeration

The great inventor yet nobody knows about him. No matter what people know he is one of the great inventors in the history of computer science. He gave us an outstanding technique that changed the way we communicate.

7 thoughts on “A 14 Year Old Indian Boy Was The Actual Inventor of E-mail”

  1. I read a lot of rubbish – and this takes the price for at least this week.

    E-mai as you know it, or just “mail” is a Unix thing that was inherited by the computing commuity in general by 1978. In 1982, a company called Norsk Data made something new, and that was HTML edited emails – about the time when your “Shiva” apparently claimed to register his claim to “E-mail”. Well they called it “NOTIS-ID” and “NOTIS-MAIL”, and were far from the first.
    In the early days, I had an account – my initials, and anyone, anywhere in the world would send me messages if they knew my initials – no domain and no country. Later on, the sam happened by accident because my group lent a computer that as used as node for Europe beside “mcvax” in Amsterdam.
    Sorry – but your story is just another anecdote that is not related to reality. You needed also in those days to be able to exchange notices to the others – in particular the “Operator” of the computer. You needed to tell this to mount disk, prepare for printout, “spool” jobs, and those “jobs” very often ended by dropping you and email saying it has completed, and gave a summary of how things had gone – and “now it is time to collect the printout”.
    The first Unix computers that were linked together used telephone wires to communicate – the RS232 serial link. Later this became a standard – X.21 and X.25 and IBM came with their “SNA” where LU6.2 were the X.21 implementation. In Unix the first “mail” was a variant of “remote execution” – “rex”, and then “remote copy” – “rcp”. You could re-direct stdout to the “rcp” command and enable this to be shown on another computer. Since the phone lines were analogue, sending too fast meant that you exceeded your bandwidth and that could give funny results, including taking the entire local switch down – since the frequencies above was used to monitor the calls – “out of band signals”.

    The first use of computers were military and then physics. But the first commercial use was in telecommunication, to make switches to enable calls to be connected and taken down without an operator plugging in and taking out, or some cranky machinery trying the same. So Bell Labs made computers for switching, used hardware from DEC – PDP serie, and to manage it all, someone called Kerigan and another called Ritchie made Unix and C. And here was email included. Then came tcp/ip from MIT developed on a US DoD contract – there are just one of the technologies that existed before tcp/ip that still is in use, and that is NETBIOS by Microsoft, that is based on Xerox Network Software – XNS – IPX/SPX. The serial way of communicating on X.25 / X.21 exists in theory, but now at very much higher bit-rates, based on other ITU standards. The protocols used for email is “SMTP” – “Simple Mail Transfer Protocol” – and this had been in place long before you guy entered the scene. SMTP is still used when you send emails, but is a point-to-point protocol, to servers that must be available. So “POP” was developed, to allow network servers to hold on to messages for you, and you could collect them later. IMAP is a Microsoft thing, where the POP server holds on to all messages, allows many to read the same, and allows an organisation to control access to the messages better.

    If your guy wrote code, he wrote them all in vain. Unix mail comes with the system, where your email address was your log-in id. Sorry – but try to investigate and stack up the details before you publish the next time. Otherwise, I can claim that email was invented in Norway – by Norsk Data that sold the systems to India.

    Reply
    • Great Comment Knut H.!!!

      I did some fact checking and your statements are accurate.
      I’m intrigued and would like to learn more.

      I will leave my e-mail address and see if it would be possible for you and I to exchange contact info?

      Please advise.

      I look forward to hearing from you.
      [email protected]

      Reply
  2. hahahaha always them…. they even claim they invented the Internet….they also claim they invented the Bitcoin

    pffft…..false news…… bullshit

    Reply
    • U all Pakistanis are the rubbish as ur faces.
      Do u know about the Google, just go and search on it that who invented E-mail.
      Ye saale angrez to chutiye h hi aur tum Pakistani bhi koi km Chutiye nhi ho.

      and a last thing I’m adding that tu in angrezon ko Chutiye ka meaning bta diyo.
      Chutiya khi ka…..

      Reply
      • Buhat Achi Baat He … Gaali De Kar Kamal Ka Kaam Kar Rahe Hen Aap. Iss Baat Se Aap Ka Jhoota Claim Sach to Sabit Ho Nahin Sakta.

        Reply
  3. Even if this claim is False, Indians are playing a vital part in IT Field in whole world. In Sub-continent, India is Big Player in IT Industry. I am a Pakistani & I don’t have any issue to accept this reality. Nowadays Pakistan’s IT Industry is also Grooming and In Sha Allah we’ll be on Top Soon. Pakistan is producing so many young IT Professionals as well as Most Freelancers are also been taken from Pakistan in recent Past and Current times.

    Reply

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