[SIGCIS-Members] Email was invented by a school boy in 1978 says Washington Post & Time Magazine

[Thomas Haigh]

Hello everyone,

 

Did you know that email was invented in 1978 by a 14 year old called V.A.
Shiva Ayyadura? The shocking news was broken recently by the Washington Post
in what I think was a print story
http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/MEPMRJ/NSC4SB/ZCNCKZ/FVLP7K/7278IF/50
/h
 
Time Magazine's website has a blogger who reported the same story on "The
Man Who Invented Email."
http://techland.time.com/2011/11/15/the-man-who-invented-email/
 
For most SIGCIS members this story probably does not pass the "sniff test"
but to save you looking anything up:
 
There are two obvious senses in which something could be the "first email
system."
 
1) The first "mail" system to let a user write a message to another user of
the same computer system, who could read it when he/she next logged in. This
was a step beyond earlier chat/talk capabilities that only allowed instant
display of messages. Mail features became common on the timesharing
computers of the late 1960s. MIT is a strong contender for the first place
where this happened. A series of NY Times blog stories suggested that MIT
CTSS in 1965 might have been the first system to include such a mail
feature.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/did-my-brother-invent-e-mail
-with-tom-van-vleck-part-one/.
<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/did-my-brother-invent-e-mai
l-with-tom-van-vleck-part-one/>  This seems plausible, though I would not be
stunned to learn of an earlier use.
 
2) The first system to send a message to someone using a DIFFERENT computer,
via a network. This appears to have been on the ARPANET in 1971, with
initial implementation by Ray Tomlinson. Janet Abbate's book Inventing the
Internet includes a solid treatment of this, making clear that "network
mail" became the "killer application" for ARPANET even though remote logins
had been the application for which it was originally designed.
 
Craig Partridge gave more technical detail and covered later developments in
"The Technical Development of Internet Email" published in IEEE Annals of
the History of Computing 30:2, April-June 2008:3-29. I looked at the
commercialization of email in "Protocols for Profit: Web and E-mail
Technologies as Product and Infrastructure" in The Internet and American
Business, edited by William Aspray and Paul Ceruzzi, MIT Press, 2008:
105-158.
(http://www.tomandmaria.com/tom/Writing/ProtocolsForProfitDRAFT.pdf)
 
The Washington Post article is unclear of what Ayyadura is supposed to have
done . A "clarification" now says that "Ayyadurai holds the copyright to the
computer program called "email," establishing him as the creator of the
"computer program for [an] electronic mail system" with that name, according
to the U.S. Copyright Office." A caption on the story notes that "He holds
the copyright to both EMIAL and the term E-mail" which of course is
meaningless. They seem to be confusing copyright protection with patent
protection, and implying that he would only have copyright on a program he
created if it was the first of its kind. I could write a program called
"OPERATING SYSTEM" tomorrow and hold the copyright, but it wouldn't mean I
invented operating systems. Wouldn't mean I could trademark the term either,
which could also be what they are confusing copyright with.

 

I have to admit that I'm forming an uneasy fascination with V.A. Shiva
Ayyadura's website. It's full of new age/cybernetic waffle and extravagant
self promotion. He bills himself as "Founder, Chairman and President of the
Institute for Integrative Systems" in a video promoting "Turmeric: Wonder
Herb of India." There's a "featured article" on "The Theatrics of Healing."
He is also "world's foremost authority on integrating systems of medicine."
The description on his publications page
http://www.vashiva.com/publications.asp of his book "The EMAIL Revolution"
is the old placeholder text: "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...." His list of
"Chapters in Books" includes his 1990 masters
thesis, a paper at "Document Analysis Conference" in 1994 "submitted for
publication" and items described only as "Chapter in Communications Arts"
and "Chapter on Electrodynamics, Dynamics,". 
 
Meanwhile his page on himself as "the inventor of EMAIL"
(http://www.vashiva.com/inventing_email.asp) includes two headings of "First
US Copyright for EMAIL, 1982" one above a copyright certificate and once
above a 2004 patent for an automated reply system. The kindest thing one can
say is that he does consistently capitalize EMAIL, allowing for a legalistic
defense that he only means to claim to have invented a program called
"EMAIL" rather than the idea of
electronic mail.
 
On the other hand his poster "The History of EMAIL"
http://www.vashiva.com/innovation/email/vashiva-inventor-of-email.asp
clearly lays claim to creation of the entire electronic mail concept. Little
people graphics show the growth of email users from 2 in 1979 to 3.1 billion
today. His 1982 copyright registration looms as a major event. Van Vleck,
Tomlinson, etc. appear only as "Pre-EMIAL Innovators." 
 
He appears to claim that everything prior to his system was just "text
messaging" and that he was the first to have fields for "to," "from," etc.
which is also clearly false. Here's an incoherent Q and A from the Time
"interview."
 

Ray Tomlinson is often credited as the inventor of email. Is he credited
correctly, in your opinion, or should he be credited for something else?


Shiva: I think that's the thing that's sort of resulted in this confusion.
Since '94, people have always said something's going to kill e-mail-and the
latest was text messaging, right? Ray and Tom Van Vleck really did text
messaging. In fact, in one of Tom's early communications he says his boss
wouldn't let him do electronic letters internally, which is actually the
mail piece of it. So they were more focused from a messaging standpoint: How
do you get a message from point A to point B to manipulate another machine
at that more core level?

 
What shocks me is that real newspapers could print this kind of thing.
Obviously journalists are too busy to read the historical literature. Even
calling a historian might take an hour or two to arrange. But are they even
incapable of using Wikipedia and Google? Why is the Washington Post
employing as the "editor of ideas at innovations"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/emi-kolawole/2011/03/02/AB6t4sM_page.html
someone who doesn't know the difference between patent, trademark and
copyright? Did all the real journalists get downsized? Should we look
forward to "William Shatner: the Inventor of Television." 
 
Anyway, it does make me sad about the gap between all the great historical
work that has been done by our community and the complete lack of use made
of it by the media in this case. Despite a mass of criticism on the comments
thread and presumably in emails from readers the Washington Post has done no
more that append it's its defensive and absurd "clarification."
 
Tom  
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