5 Jan
2017
5 Jan
'17
12:08 p.m.
To rebut this claim one doesn’t need to designate any individual as THE inventor of email, merely to reiterate the historical consensus that email is a synonym for electronic mail and that electronic mail was in use prior to 1978 (or 1980 or 1982). However smart and likeable you are, you can’t invent something that’s already been invented.
Excellent points Tom. Any such document aimed at the general public and non-technical/non-academic readers should also strongly emphasize the * commercial * systems such as Compuserve. It would also be helpful to cite email's early appearances in mainstream dictionaries/newspapers.