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How The Guy Who Did Not Invented Email Received The Credit

By on February 23, 2012 in History / News

Techdirt:

Late last week, the Washington Post reported that The Smithsonian had acquired “tapes, documentation, copyrights, and over 50,000 lines of code from V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, who both the Smithsonian and the Washington Post insisted was the “inventor of e-mail.” There’s just one problem with this: It’s not actually true. … As is nicely summarized on Wikipedia’s talk page about Ayyadurai, he was responsible for “merely inventing an email management system that he named EMAIL,” which came long after email itself.

Either way, it appears that Ayyadurai has played up this idea that he’s the inventor of email, despite little to back that up (apparently frustrating many people who actually know the history). Yes, he copyrighted a particular bit of code, but there’s little to support the idea that he had very much to do with “the invention of email” in any way.

Can you think of any other “inventions” where the wrong people received the credit?

Photo by Javier Aroche

email inventors

Angela Shupe has added 5,783 posts to Business Opportunities Weblog.

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  • Andres

    Too many people think that Henry Ford invented the car, and that Edison invented the lightbulb, they just improved it in a certain way to make it easier for the public to obtain it.

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