'Inventor of email' receives damages from Gawker's collapsed empire Former Gawker publisher Nick Denton has agreed to pay computer scientist and biotech entrepreneur Dr Shiva Ayyadurai $750,000 in damages after the blog wrote that Ayyadurai invented claims that he invented "email" in the late 1970s. The settlement was bundled along with the $31m damages paid to wrestler Hulk Hogan, aka Terry …
We're talking about Thomas Edison, right ?
Because Thomas Edison is world-renowned. As is Albert Einstein.
This Dr Ayyadurai guy seems to be world-renowned in his own little world. Kudos to him for inventing something he called EMAIL all by himself at whatever age it was, but I'm sorry, world-renowned he ain't.
Shiva Ayyadurai wrote a program that he named "EMAIL". He invented that program. But email had existed long before that.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120222/11132917842/how-guy-who-didnt-invent-email-got-memorialized-press-smithsonian-as-inventor-email.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160511/10135934407/guy-who-didnt-invent-email-sues-gawker-pointing-out-he-didnt-invent-email.shtml
BBN were one of the earliest into computers and networking. I'd be surprised if they *didn't* have email of some kind.
At the University of Alberta, the earliest email I recall was "SHOW:MAIL" running on the IBM/Amdahl mainframe under the MTS operating system. I don't know for sure, but I'd put that as first running by the early to mid 1970's. My memory isn't good, but I think the fellow who created the "SHOW" account was named Keith Fenske, and worked for the math department. I assume he wrote the MAIL program.
Ray Tomlinson worked for BBN when he invented *networked* email; it existed within systems earlier.
I worked for BBN in 1978 and we all used email; it had been around for years. They had one client program, IIRC called HERMES, which ran on TENEX (their PDP-10T OS, which became TOPS-20 after DEC bought it), which did amazing things. It had "all of the headers" -- you could invent headers of your own choosing, as it really was a small database program that let you sort and query on any header field. No doubt it did al of the stuff that Shiva claimed to have "invented". While I used it within BBN, I believe it was used by government clients too. Of course there was still SENDMSG for simple stuff, and a number of lighter, faster systems.
Shiva did not invent anything. Denton probably paid him off because his lawyer said it was cheaper than litigating. Gawker has to take down the articles. But others no doubt will keep them in an archive, where they can get more publicity than ever.
Yahoo says, "Certain of the settlement terms are incorporated within Gawker Media's latest proposed plan of liquidation, filed today, and include a proposed settlement payment to Dr. Ayyadurai and removal of the article at issue."
So the $750 K is bundled not only with the Hulk Hogan settlement but with arrangements to pay the utility companies and the people who tend the coffee machines?
That's probably true, but you might still decide that it is cheaper to agree a payout to make the lawyers go away. After all, sometimes courts make, er, idiosyncratic decisions.
And anyway, something being true merely means you will win the case and here in the post-Leveson UK that no longer guarantees that you won't be out of pocket.
According to Ayyadurai's website, he developed a substantial electronic mail program for the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey as a 14-year-old in 1978, calling it EMAIL.
As the inventor of email, shirely, he has earned the right to be listed in the Wikipedia entry for UMDNJ, under the list "Notable alumni and faculty". Or perhaps under a separate category by itself?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Medicine_and_Dentistry_of_New_Jersey
Jimbo, if you are listening, can you get one of your unpaid minions to look into it ASAP please.
> calling it EMAIL
This is the french translation of enamel.
All those dentists must have thought it's got something to do with teeth.
Which is why no-one ever heard of that particular program written by a 14-year old with unlimited access to the uni basement, probably in PL/I.
In 1978 at the Univ of California I was using Email on their Unix systems. I think it was mainly confined to individual machines (networking was just starting then), but it was Email. UUCP and sendmail soon linked machines together in the next year or two before the internet then took off.
Most of you look like stupid commentards, because you dont know what is going on.
Perhaps a better title would be "Billions overturn truth in US Court system".
Our only hope is that PT will get the courts to declare that black is white - and then get run over on a pedestrian crossing.
"Most of you look like stupid commentards, because you dont know what is going on.
Perhaps a better title would be "Billions overturn truth in US Court system".
Our only hope is that PT will get the courts to declare that black is white - and then get run over on a pedestrian crossing."
I've been following this little saga for as long as it's been running but go on, tell us all what we missed.
maybe you have, but 90% of the thread posters havent, hence coming across like commentards.
PT has been secretly funding dozens of multi-million dollar lawsuits, of little or no merit against Gawker because they (quite truthfully), announced to the world that he was a closet gay.
(For those of you who havent read up on the back story)
Gawker had no choice but to settle, as they needed to finalise these suits before they could finish the HH case that was making them bankrupt.
In the UK they might have a chance of getting it all overturned due to "abuse of process", I dont know the US legal system well enough to comment on their chances in a US court.
yes. the date. excellent point!
And there was this CDC 'Cyber' system in use by the state of california university system, which had, *cough*, e-mail on it. and there was this guy in 1978 at SJSU who had written an e-mail system for the on-campus timesharing minicomputer (running RSTS/E on a PDP-11/70). His name wasn't "that guy" either.
There was also another guy, an associate prof, who accessed ARPANET e-mail over a phone connection.
So yeah, I call B.S. on that idiot's "invented" claims of inventing e-mail in the _LATE_ 70's. RFC's 821 and 822 notwithstanding, of course.
So, what!! It might have been called something else or maybe "email" by anyone. "Email" is just an abbreviation for "electronic mail" (as opposed to postal mail) that moves electronic messages around. Big deal!
As for user-to-user electronic mail, I used one on a Tymshare SDS-940 back in the 60's. It was no big deal then. We used ASR-33 teletypes. The messages were "short" (thankfully).
Actually there is no proof that he invented the moniker either.
What is true though, is just how disingenuous his claim of inventing a world recognised system years after it's known use.
Perhaps he is related to Dr. Evil's father? and also invented the question mark as well
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118655/quotes
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