Did Shiva Aiyadurai invent email?

Interesting claims by Dr. V. A. Shiva Ayyadurai (http://inventorofemail.com
),
and responses from the computing community.

 http://www.sigcis.org/Ayyadurai

http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2012/9/154586-seven-lessons-from-bad-history/fulltext

Washigton Post has issued a correction to its story:
"Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly referred
to V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai as the inventor of electronic messaging. This
version has been corrected. The previous, online version of this story
also incorrectly cited Ayyadurai’s invention as containing, “The lines
of code that produced the first ‘bcc,’ ‘cc,’ ‘to’ and ‘from’ fields.”
These features were outlined in earlier documentation separate from
Ayyadurai’s work. The original headline also erroneously implied that
Ayyadurai had been “honored by [the] Smithsonian” as the “inventor of
e-mail.” Dr. Ayyadurai was not honored for inventing electronic
messaging. The Smithsonian National Museum of American History
incorporated the paperwork documenting the creation of his program
into their collection. A previous version also incorrectly stated that
had Ayyadurai “pursued a patent, it could have significantly stunted
the technology’s growth even as it had the potential to make him
incredibly wealthy.” At the time, patents were not awarded for the
creation of software."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-innovations/va-shivaayyadurai-inventor-of-e-mail-honored-by-smithsonian/2012/02/17/gIQA8gQhKR_story.html

Also, of relevance:
http://gizmodo.com/5888702/corruption-lies-and-death-threats-the-crazy-story-of-the-man-who-pretended-to-invent-email
http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/2012/05/shiva-ayyaduri-email-us-postal-service/

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N. Ganesan
Received on Mon Sep 03 2012 - 09:50:15 CDT