Do you know who invented E-Mail? Electronic mail was actually invented by then 14-year-old boy named VA Shiva Ayyadurai – an Indian, who allowed us to communicate with one another within seconds. He was born to a Tamil Family in Bombay. At the age of 7, he left with his family to live in the US. In 1978, when he was aged 14, he developed a full-scale emulation of the interoffice mail system which he named “E-mail”. It replicated all the functions of the interoffice mail system: Inbox, Folders, Outbox, Attachments, Memo, Address Book, etc. These features are now familiar parts of every email system.

Livingston Student Designs Electronic Mail System:

Ayyadurai started his work on the email system for the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey when he was studying at Livingston High School in New Jersey. He closely observed that the desktop of each secretary, in addition to the typewriter, had an Inbox, Folders, Outbox, Carbon Copy Paper, Drafts, Address Book, Paper Clips (for attachments), etc, which they used every day to create and process incoming and outgoing mail.

US Govt officially recognized Ayyadurai as the inventor of E-mail:

Then he invented an electronic version of this system. He created a computer programme of over 50,000 lines of code, which electronically replicated all the features of the interoffice mail system. In 1982, on August 30, the US government officially recognized VA Shiva Ayyadurai as the inventor of E-mail by awarding him the first US Copyright for Email for his 1978 invention.

In spite of this discovery, his name is nowhere in modern history of computer science. Lost in the pages of history, he is a name not many of us know. Whoever claims the invention, Ayyadurai will remain the father of E-mail and honor him for giving us an outstanding invention that changed the way we communicate. Hope he gets the name in history he deserves.