Do You Know The Indian-American CHILD Who Invented E-MAIL : V A Shiva Ayyadurai

V. A. Shiva Ayyadurai, an Indian-American who at the age of 14 created E-Mail

On August 30, this year, email turned 41. However, how many of us are aware that V. A. Shiva Ayyadurai, an Indian American, devised this rapid mode of information transport when he was just 14 years old?

Ayyadurai developed "email," a computer programme, in 1978 to mimic all the features of the inter office mail system, including the Inbox, Outbox, Folders, Memo, Attachments, Address Book, and others. These functions are now common place components of all email systems.

The US government recognised Ayyadurai as the creator of email on August 30, 1982, by giving him the first US Copyright for Email for his creation from the year 1978. At the time, the only means of safeguarding software inventions was through copyright.

With a sizable research budget, email wasn't developed in major organisations like the ARPANET, MIT, or the military. According to the Huffington Post, these organisations had deemed the development of such a system "impossible" due to its extreme complexity.

Ayyadurai was born in Bombay to a Tamil family. He moved to the US with his family when he was seven years old.

In order to learn computer programming at the age of 14, he participated in a special summer programme at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University (NYU). He eventually graduated from Livingston High School in Livingston, New Jersey. He was a research fellow at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) while still in high school.

Dr. Leslie Michelson, who was then the director of the Laboratory Computer Network (LCN) at UMDNJ, was immediately struck by Ayyadurai's talent, passion, and dedication. He set him the task of replacing the outdated paper-based mail system at UMDNJ with an electronic one.

The inter-office mail system was a sophisticated method of inter-office communication. This approach was utilised by almost all offices, including those of presidents and prime ministers, and was not exclusive to UMDNJ.

Ayyadurai paid special attention to how each secretary used an Inbox, Outbox, Draughts, Carbon Copy Paper, Folders, Address Book, and Paper Clips (for attachments) to create and process incoming and outgoing mail every day. He also noted that each secretary had a typewriter on their desk in addition to these items.

He then had the idea for an electrical adaptation of this technique. In over 50,000 lines of code, he wrote a computer programme that electronically replicated every aspect of the interoffice mail system.