14- year old invents email!

I’ve written about the history of technology a number of times – from keyboards to the internet itself. One of the more interesting bits of information here is the invention of e-mail. It was invented by a 14-year old. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai was enrolled in a programming course as a young teenager. Shortly after he finished, a coworker of his mother’s – Les Michelson - asked if he would like a job at the University of Medicine and Dentistry. Of course he agreed. For the next several days, Michaelson had Shiva observe the mail system in place and then told him to go forth and recreate it in electronic form.

Another interesting thing is how little email has changed since the summer Shiva began working on it. He was replicating a system that used to, from, cc, bcc, subject, date, and body on a campus-wide scale. Today’s email still uses the same fields. What Shiva created was entirely adequate, and it’s stability since the late 70s is indicative of his great success.