Why email was invented

Search Blog Search. A brief history of email: dedicated to Ray Tomlinson. Following the passing of internet pioneer and email creator Ray Tomlinson, we here at Phrasee decided that it was time to take a look back at the history of email as a communications medium. With over 2. It looked like this:. Ray Tomlinson had the answer:.

The age of email had begun in earnest. Trying to get ahead of the competition? Take me there! Newsletter signup Sign up to our newsletter. Shiva Ayyadurai who says he was the one who invented email as a teen tech prodigy in the late s. According to Tomlinson, things were pretty archaic at the time. Messages were sent to numbered mailboxes where they were printed out and paper was delivered to physical inboxes.

Plus, you could only send messages to people using the same computer. Tomlinson says it took him more than two decades to grasp the impact of the innovation. Shiva Ayyadurai has led an interesting life. He holds four degrees from MIT, founded the technology company Millennium Cybernetics in the s, authored books on the email industry, twice ran for U. Senate, and was once romantically linked to actress Fran Drescher. That same year, he volunteered at a dental school in New Jersey where his mother worked.

Time magazine published a Techland interview in , which was followed by a article in the Washington Post. When asked about Tomlinson, he told Doug Aamoth of Time :. 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? This led to corrections and clarifications from both The Post and the Smithsonian. Tomlinson told Gizmodo that his solution included the fields as well.

Incidentally, he hired the same attorney who represented Hulk Hogan in the lawsuit against Gawker, which billionaire investor Peter Thiel reportedly bankrolled. Although MIT distanced itself from Ayyadurai after the controversy, renowned former MIT professor Noam Chomsky made statements backing the date, which Ayyadurai released to the press in :. The facts are indisputable. Over the years, Ayyadurai expressed a belief that denial of his claim to be the inventor of email is racially motivated.

One day after Tomlinson died; Ayyadurai also took to Twitter to again stake his claim to the title. I'm the low-caste, dark-skinned, Indian, who DID invent email. Their mascot Tomlinson dies a liar. Is it the story of the mild-mannered, Steve-Wozniak-like engineer who worked humbly behind the scenes, or the ambitious young student who overcame obstacles to become a tenacious businessman in pursuit of the American Dream? So who really invented email?

At this moment in history, the last thing we need is another topic that divides us. The digital transformation that took place over the last 50 years is truly incredible.

Both Tomlinson and Ayyadurai set out to solve the same problem, and perhaps unsurprisingly, they both came up with similar solutions at around the same time that were based on existing communication processes.

And, looking back can often help you figure out what to expect in the future. Email on Acid offers unlimited email testing in major mailbox providers and the most popular devices. That means you can make sure your email looks good before it hits the inbox. Want to see for yourself? Many websites are using Emails to increase their popularity and reach the targeted audience.

Thus, it's not wrong to know a bit about the person who made communication easier and more convenient for us. The invention of email made it easy for all of us to communicate with people who are far away from us.

It also became a major medium for corporates to exchange data and information to a huge number of workers at a single click. The features like CC, BCC, attachments are something that we use on a daily basis while communicating with people on the other side.

It also offers to attach various types of files, be it an image, audio, or pdf. The origination of email goes back to New Jersey. An employee of the University of Medicine and Dentistry, Shiva Ayyaduari, wrote over 50, lines of code when he was working there.

He had also served as a particle physicist at Brookhaven National Labs. He was the first person to write a full-scale electronic emulation of the interoffice and an inter-organizational mailing system that consists of Inbox, Outbox, Folder, and many more other features. The exact date for the invention is 30 th August On this day the US Government gave Shiva recognition for the invention of email.

Ray Tomlinson got initial credit for the invention of email. But after his death, Shiva began his work on the email system and got it copyrighted as his software "Email.

Shiva's vision was to invent something that everyone could use, from a secretary to a CEO for reliable sending and receiving of digital messages. Around , customers including American Express, Kmart, and Calvin Klein started using Email as a method of communication. Because of them, Emails' popularity increased all over the world. The main website of EchoMail states that the "inventor of Email" is Ayyaduari. After this invention, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India's largest science agency, hired Shiva which was a great honor.

Samir K. Brahmachari directed the institution. Shiva spent months working on a business plan for the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research Tech.

Sadly, he did not receive any response from the Director, Samir K. In the end, his job offer was withdrawn within 5 months of him being offered the position in the first place.