22 September 2025
By Publisher Ray Carmen
Who is Dr Shiva Ayyadurai?
- Full name: V. A. Shiva Ayyadurai.
- Background: Born in India, immigrated to the US; educated in science and engineering; holds a PhD from MIT.
- The claim: He asserts that he invented the modern email system as a teenager. Specifically, in 1978, at age 14, while working at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ), he created a software system he calls “EMAIL” that emulated an interoffice paper mail system—i.e. with features like inbox, outbox, folders, address book, memo, etc.
What are the key pieces of evidence in his favour?
EMAIL software & Copyright
Ayyadurai registered a copyright for a computer program named EMAIL in 1982, claiming it was written in 1981. This software was, by his account, designed for internal (interoffice) communication at UMDNJ.
Features
According to his description, this system had a number of things familiar to modern email users: inbox, outbox, address book, attachments, etc. He claims he named it “EMAIL” and that the term had not been used before in that way.
Support by some individuals and institutions
- Some media outlets reported his story.
- Noam Chomsky, for example, has been cited as supporting Ayyadurai’s framing under certain definitions of what email is.
- The U.S. Copyright Office’s registration is a formal document, showing that somebody named “EMAIL” program was registered.
What are the counterarguments? Why many experts dispute his claim
- Pre-existing electronic messaging systems
- Email as a concept had been around in various forms earlier. There were messaging systems on time-sharing computers in the 1960s (e.g. MIT’s CTSS “mail” command) and ARPANET messaging systems by early 1970s. These systems allowed messages between users/computers.
- Thus, many historians assert that Ayyadurai’s system was not the first to enable electronic messaging between users.
- Scope and influence
- Ayyadurai’s EMAIL system, by most accounts, was local to UMDNJ (internal / interoffice), and did not send messages across networks like ARPANET; it did not shape the widely adopted protocols of what we now call “email” over the Internet.
- It’s argued that many features that Ayyadurai claims as novel had existed earlier in other systems or described in technical documents (RFCs etc.).
- Terminology and definitions
- A big part of the contention is what one means by “invented email.” If you define “email” narrowly as an internet-based, networked system, or broadly to include earlier messaging systems or inter-user mail systems, you’ll get different answers.
- Ayyadurai’s use of the term “EMAIL” (in uppercase) and the copyright are clear for his software, but that doesn’t by itself prove he invented all systems or the networked email we use today.
- Criticism and legal battles
- Some media outlets that initially reported his claims later issued corrections.
- Ayyadurai filed lawsuits (e.g. vs. Techdirt, Gawker) for defamation over claims that he did not invent email. Some were dismissed or settled.
What seems likely (based on available evidence)
Putting together the evidence from multiple sources:
- He did build a working interoffice electronic messaging system called “EMAIL” at UMDNJ in around 1978-1980 as a teenager. It had many features (inbox, outbox, etc.) mirroring a paper interoffice mail system. This is well documented via his copyright registration and his accounts.
- He did not invent email in the form that is universally recognized today, especially the networked email systems (e.g. ARPANET/email protocols) that became standard in the 1970s and 80s. There are clear precedents.
- The dispute largely hinges on definitions: what counts as “email”, what features and scope are required, and whether building a localized system is equivalent to originating the idea of electronic mail generally.
