It sounds like the system we use today hasn’t changed all that much.?


Shiva: Exactly, because the fundamentals of the system came from interoffice mail, which went through decades and decades of development. There’s still the “to:”, the “from:”, the “cc:”, the subject line, the body and the attachments. Attachments were originally called enclosures, because in the physical mail system they’d type “encl.” followed by the enclosure.

Noam Chomsky: I have known VA Shiva Ayyadurai since he was a sophomore at MIT, when he designed and pursued an Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) on the origins and evolution of the Indian caste system. I have kept up with him since that time. I have now become aware of the controversy on the invention of Email following the recent Washington Post article.


Here are some background facts. On January 21, 1981, Shiva received a Westinghouse Science Talent Search Honors Award for creating EMAIL. On August 30, 1982, he received the first US Copyright for "EMAIL" for the "Computer Program for Electronic Mail System". On February 16, 2012, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History accepted his code, papers and artifacts demonstrating his work on EMAIL.

The angry reaction to the news of his invention of EMAIL and the steps taken to belittle the achievement are most unfortunate. They suggest an effort to dismiss the fact that innovation can take place by anyone, in any place, at any time. And they highlight the need to ensure that innovation must not be monopolized by those with power — power which, incidentally, is substantially a public gift.

The efforts to belittle the innovation of a 14-year-old child should lead to reflection on the larger story of how power is gained, maintained, and expanded, and the need to encourage, not undermine, the capacities for creative inquiry that are widely shared and could flourish, if recognized and given the support they deserve.

Noam Chomsky: It is heartening to hear that the exposition of facts on the publicly available web site, http://www.inventorofemail.com is helping the public validate that a 14-year-old boy invented email in 1978, while working in Newark, NJ. What continue to be deplorable are the childish tantrums of industry insiders who now believe that by creating confusion on the case of "email", they can distract attention from the facts.

In languages such as FORTRAN IV, it was conventional and a well-known fact that names of programs, variables and subroutines were typically written in upper case --- thus the convention of "EMAIL" to refer to the main subroutine name of the program VA Shiva Ayyadurai developed. By the source code submitted to the US Copyright Office and by the documents provided to the Smithsonian, email's intention and origin was to replicate electronically the interoffice, inter-organizational mail system. These are indisputable facts, as I have referred to in my earlier statement.

Note by the Copyright Act of 1976, once a work is in publication it is protected. In 1978, “email” was first coined and used by Shiva to name his program. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in modern times, the date of origin of email is 1979, except for an old English reference to mean enamel in the 1500's. The Merriam-Webster has the date of origin as 1982. Note Shiva, received his formal Copyright registration in 1982.

As late as December 1977, Mr. David Crocker, one of Shiva's detractors, part of the ARPAnet coterie, clearly stated in a report he authored, “...no attempt is being made to emulate a full-scale, inter-organizational mail system.”

Given the term email was not used prior to 1978, and there was no intention to emulate “...a full-scale, inter-organizational mail system,” as late as December 1977, there is no controversy here, except the one created by industry insiders, who have a vested interest to protect a false branding that BBN is the “inventor of email”, which the facts obliterate.

Email, upper case, lower case, any case, is the electronic version of the interoffice, inter-organizational mail system, the email we all experience today --- and email was invented in 1978 by a 14-year-old working in Newark, NJ. The facts are indisputable.

Dr.Leslie P.Michelson:

It has been nearly thirty years since Shiva and I have spoken. After observing the news following his being honored at the Smithsonian on February 16, 2012, and the abusive reaction from certain individuals, I believed that it was important to respond for many reasons. My first reason is to unequivocally authenticate that Shiva created “EMAIL”, the first email system, in my lab, starting in 1978. EMAIL, for the record, was more than just a “program“ but a complete system --- it was the “electronic inter-office, inter-organizational mail system,” the first of its kind, an integrated platform that provided all the recognizable elements of what we call email today, as related in a previous and accurate article written by Doug Aamoth in Time. EMAIL went beyond “electronic messaging.”

My second reason is to offer an appreciation of the ecosystem and environment, in which this creation of EMAIL took place at UMDNJ. Much of the abuse and invective surrounding news of the invention of the world’s first email system by a 14-year-old, is more about perhaps a shattering of a false and long-held narrative that innovation can only take place in environment of big universities, large companies and the military, and by certain people. My third reason, perhaps the most important one, is to share a different narrative, that our efforts at UMDNJ, which supported EMAIL’s innovation, demonstrate that innovation can take place any place, any time and by anybody, if the right structure and resources are provided, even in Newark, NJ in 1978 by a 14-year-old.

Dr.Leslie P.Michelson:

Let me begin by providing you a background to UMDNJ and my relationship with it. In 1975 the IT department of UMDNJ, then officially known as the College of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (CMDNJ) hired me, an experimental high energy physicist from Brookhaven National Laboratories, who had some general scientific computing experience and an interest in using minicomputers, the small computers of the time, to control and acquire data from laboratory experiments.

In 1978, CMDNJ, was a young organization, and prior to its establishment as a university of the Health Sciences in December of 1981, it was (and still is) a free-standing public institution comprising several medical schools, a dental school, school for the health related professions and a graduate school of the biomedical sciences . Absent were the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). Rather, CMDNJ focused exclusively on clinical and basic biomedical research and healthcare. Having been signed into law in 1970 and comprised of the former Rutgers Medical School and the New Jersey College of Medicine and Dentistry, CMDNJ was establishing itself as a major academic health sciences institution.

The IT department at the time, although small, included a scientific data processing group. The group was populated with several biostatisticians and mainframe computer experts. The staff interacted with faculty from numerous departments both in the clinical and basic sciences and became quite adept at introducing machine computation to life scientists, who, given their backgrounds and given the time period had little experience in using computers. Our main local computing device, an IBM remote job entry terminal, was connected to remote batch and time sharing machines operated by an educational consortium known as the New Jersey Educational Computer Network.

Minicomputers made by Digital Equipment Corporation, Data General, Hewlett Packard and others were in fairly widespread use by 1975. They were used with growing frequency in disciplines ranging from nuclear physics to neuroscience. Medical equipment manufacturers were beginning to incorporate them as control and analysis elements in a new device called CAT Scan and they would soon give rise to a new generation of diagnostic instrumentation in which the rate of data acquisition and manipulation mandated the use compact computing hardware built into or adjacent to the instrument.

We were connecting minicomputers directly to laboratory equipment to automate data collection and effect control systems in which real time analysis could influence the generation of electrical stimulus thereby helping to guide the progress of neurophysiological lab experiments. Other life sciences disciplines were similarly suited to this kind of automation.

Although vastly less costly than mainframes, minicomputers were not inexpensive. Furthermore, we had several campuses on which to distribute the minicomputer resources including Newark, Piscataway and New Brunswick. These challenges led to the development of a network we called the LCN for Laboratory Computer Network, where more capable minicomputers were connected to one another and to smaller laboratory machines we called satellite nodes. The satellite nodes, more often than not, lacked a mass storage device -- they were very expensive at the time --and depended on the larger nodes to boot their operating systems and applications.

Amujale:


Yes, sir.

Dr Shiva invented the ‘email’ at the age of 14 years old.

budaatum:

The evidence suggests he didn't. And to be honest, you make me believe you do way more research than you done here.

Got to say, when I had Covid-19 symptoms in February, Vit B, C and hot baths cured me, though it just might have been it wasn't my time.

budatuum: V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai is not a member of the MIT faculty and did not invent email...

budaatum:

See you, amu!

Please note, I do not dispute him holding degrees from MIT. The only dispute here is whether he is the inventor of email or not.

budatuum: V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai is not a member of the MIT faculty...
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190518/23370542236/laying-out-all-evidence-shiva-ayyadurai-did-not-invent-email.shtml

Amujale:



Yet, you still haven't taken down that slanderous quote:

budaatum:

You clearly have an understanding problem amu, which you ought to resolve, because "attending MIT" does not apparently make one a "Member of MIT". But in case I'm wrong, please show me Shiva's name on the published list of Members.

https://corporation.mit.edu/membership/all-members

Do note however that whether he is a Member of MIT or not is irrelevant to this conversation which is about your claim he invented email.

And as I said when this began, what you are posting as evidence is the same as posting Genesis as evidence God created the heavens and earth.

Do let me know when you convince anyone.

Amujale:


It is disingenuous butum.

I know exactly what you did there, a play of words.

Anyway, we are waiting for your evidence.

Amujale:
If it is irrelevant to the discussion, why is it highlighted?

Highlighting something suggest that there's something we ought to be taking from it, or something that we ought not to miss.

....

LordReed:


First things first, do you accept this wager with its attendant consequences?

Next, what in particular is your contention?

Do you have sources to back up your claims and can we examine the sources?

Amujale:

....
Anyway, we are waiting for your evidence.

budaatum:
...
As for evidence, I'm finding I do not need to waste my time with your assertions, yet, since you have not convinced anyone, yet.

Do let me know when that changes.

budaatum:

You highlighted it.

Amujale:



Answer these simple questions.

Is being a current member of the faculty of MIT a prerequisite for inventing email?

Where does 'V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai is not a member of the MIT faculty..." fit into the discussion?

Lets assume that you werent trying to pull a fast one, by attempting to misinform the reader, what is the reason to bring that up?

I spotted what you did instantly.

LordReed:


First things first, do you accept this wager with its attendant consequences?

Next, what in particular is your contention?

Do you have sources to back up your claims and can we examine the sources?

budaatum:

No, whether "V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai is a member of the MIT faculty" is not a "prerequisite for inventing email", and I am not offering it as one.

budaatum:

and claiming he is/was a Member of MIT is just another lie, which goes to the credibility of whoever he says he was and whatever you claim he invented or "re-invented".

LordReed:


Amujjale, here is budaatum's claim. What is your counter claim and do you accept the consequences of the wager?

pronubian:
Definition of Email prior to 2012

Email is the electronic version of the interoffice, inter-organizational paper-based mail system.

Email is not simply the exchange of text messages.

Email is really a system --- a system of interlocking parts, each of which is essential for ordinary people to communicate effectively with one or many others, in an environment where different kinds of information must be shared (memos, documents, files, etc.) i.e. the modern office environment.

It's important to note that the World Wide Web didn't exist at the time of Shiva's invention.

Amujale:


Dr Shiva won a $750,000 lawsuit against Gawker.

budaatum:

Not true, amu. Dr Shiva did not win a $750,000 lawsuit against Gawker". Gawker settled. There's a difference.