The Boy Who Invented Email
“In 1978, a 14-year-old boy invented email.
He created a computer program, which he called “email,” that replicated all the functions of the interoffice mail system: Inbox, Outbox, Folders, Memo, Attachments, Address Book, etc., the now familiar parts of every email system.
On August 30, 1982, the US government officially recognized V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai as the inventor of email by awarding him the first US Copyright for “Email,” “Computer Program for Electronic Mail System,” for his 1978 invention. This was awarded at a time when Copyright was the only way to protect software inventions.”
Read the fascinating account of the invention of email in this article (first in a series about its history) from the huffingtonpost.
That’s funny, because RFC 733 was published 21 November, 1977. And states:
Essentially, we specify a revision to ARPANET Request for Comments (RFC) 561, "Standardizing Network Mail Headers", and RFC 680, "Message Transmission Protocol". This revision removes and compacts portions of the previous syntax and adds several features to network address specification. In particular, we focus on people and not mailboxes as recipients and allow reference to stored address lists. We expect this syntax to provide sufficient capabilities to meet most users' immediate needs and, therefore, give developers enough breathing room to produce a new mail transmission protocol "properly".
It’s successor, RFC 822, published in 1982 was the standard for email for almost 20 years.
The kid just copyrighted a program named ‘email’.
