Email turned 32 today but how many of us know that this quick method of message transfer was invented by Indian American V A Shiva Ayyadurai when he was just 14.
Shiva Ayyadurai was just a kid living in New Jersey, according to NBC Philadelphia, immigrating with his parents from India, the son of a mathematician mother and chemical engineer father.
Ayyadurai was born to a Tamil Family in Bombay. At the age of seven, he left with his family to live in the US.
Here is a video rare video clip Shri Narendra Modi Honors Dr. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, the Inventor of Email
In 1978, at the age of 14, he was given the task, while he was still in high school during the morning and working for a medical university in the afternoons, to come up with an electronic way staff for the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey to communicate,
Ayyadurai created a computer programme, which he called “email,” that replicated all the functions of the interoffice mail system: Inbox, Outbox, Folders, Memo, Attachments, Address Book, etc. These features are now familiar parts of every email system.
Meanwhile controversy has surrounded the timeline of email events. Some people, including a billion-dollar defense company, don’t agree with Ayyadurai’s version of events.
More about Shiva can be found here – http://www.vashiva.com/inventing_email.asp