Introducing the the History of Email series
I am honored to introduce the History of Email series on HuffPost. August 30 is the official Anniversary of Email.
On August 30,1982, V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai received official recognition as the inventor of email from the U.S. government, for the work he had done in 1978.
On August 30, 1982, Shiva was issued the first Copyright for "Email", "Computer Program for Electronic Mail System." At that time, Copyright was the equivalent of a patent, as there was no other way to protect software inventions. Only in 1980 was the Copyright Act of 1976 amended to protect software. Patent law had not even caught up to software in 1980.
To celebrate the Anniversary of Email and the Indian-American boy who invented email, the History of Email Series will include five wonderful articles that will share the facts about email's invention, personal reflections from myself and his Robert Field, one of Shiva's colleagues, a detailed analysis of the myths about email and its origins by world-renowned systems scientist Dr. Deborah J. Nightingale, and finally a perspective on the future of email by Shiva. The articles will be as follows:
- The Boy Who Invented Email by Larry Weber
- The Invention of Email by Dr. Leslie P. Michelson, Ph.D.
- The First Email System by Robert Field
- The Five Myths About Email by Dr. Deborah J. Nightingale, Ph.D.
- The Future of Email by Dr. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, Ph.D.
August 30th is an occasion for celebration not only for the day email was invented, but also and more importantly, the day a young 14-year-old, brilliant and determined teenager, working in Newark, NJ, invented email, at a time when experts at the forefront of technology had deemed it "impossible."
Shiva neither sought nor received any fame or fortune for his invention. In 2012, over thirty years later, the Smithsonian acquired his computer code, papers and artifacts documenting his invention for the National Museum of American History (NMAH). When news of the acquisition went public, Shiva was viciously attacked, defamed with a clear and malicious intent to destroy his character, career, and reputation as an inventor and scientist.
Noam Chomsky, reflecting on the events, released the following statement:
"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. 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." (Noam Chomsky, inventorofemail.com, April 2012)
Who were behind these attacks?
This historical series will reveal that it was a group of industry insiders, former employees, alumni and partners loyal to Raytheon/BBN, MIT, and the ARPANET coterie, publicly led by David Crocker, an ARPANET researcher and veteran of Raytheon/BBN for nearly 30 years, who had created a revisionist history of email's origin, for nearly three decades to hijack the boy's invention of email.
Their motive was to not only to protect Raytheon/BBN's multi-billion dollar brand as the "inventors of email", which gave them an unfair advantage in the competitive cyber-security market against Northrup-Grumman and General Dynamics, but also to monopolize and perpetuate a false and deplorable narrative that innovation could only occur within the bastions of big companies like Raytheon, large universities such as MIT and the military such as the ARPANET.
The documented evidence, now in the Smithsonian, had thrown a big wrench into the false history of email that these insiders had fabricated and perpetuated over the past thirty years.
Shiva and his colleagues responded by launching the website www.inventorofemail.com to share the facts including primary sources and historical documents. When a "smoking gun" document, authored by David Crocker himself, written in December 1977, which unequivocally stated:
"At this time, no attempt is being made to emulate a full-scale, inter-organizational mail system. The fact that the system is intended for use in various organizational contexts and by users of differing expertise makes it almost impossible to build a system which responds to all users' needs." (D. Crocker, December 1977, RAND Report),
was released on the site, Shiva's detractors began to retreat, and to resort to simply calling him self-promotional. This name-calling was ironic as it was Raytheon/BBN who had spent millions on creating their false brand as inventors of email.
As M.A. Padlipsky, the eminent electronic messaging pioneer, an MIT graduate, a member of the ARPANET team, observed of Raytheon/BNN's long history of self-promotional activities:
"[T]he BBN guys - who always seemed to get to write the histories and hence always seemed to have claimed to have invented everything, anyway, perhaps because BBN was the only "for-profit" to furnish key members of the original Network Working Group."--Padlipsky, M.A., ARPANET contributor and author of more than 20 RFC specifications, (Essay: "And they argued all night....", http://archive.is/dx2TK)
In 1978, Shiva had done the "impossible" by emulating the "full-scale, inter-organizational mail system", which he called "email", a term never used before, thus defining email, as we all know and use today, and for which he was the first to receive formal recognition by the US Government for its invention.
However, in the age of Google and Wikipedia, where sensationalism and poor journalism, can obfuscate the truth, the origin of email became confused by the deliberate work of those industry insiders.
As the Anniversary of Email approaches on August 30, it is time the world knows the real struggle that a 14-year-old boy endured and what he gave to the world. His story is not just about the invention of email, but more about who owns and controls innovation, and what that means for all of us.
Welcome to the History of Email. Celebrate August 30th, the Anniversary of Email!