Today is the anniversary of the invention of email.

In 1978, a 14-year-old boy invented 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.

 

 

"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.

 

Full Article Here/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-field/history-of-email-first-email-system_b_5722000.html