If you\u2019re reading this, you\u2019re online and, as such, you probably have<\/p>\n
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an email account. But have you ever wondered about the origins of<\/p>\n
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email? It\u2019s not exactly a cut-and-dried case, as various forms of<\/p>\n
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electronic messaging have been around since the humble telegraph.<\/p>\n
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I had the opportunity to sit down with V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai<\/a>,<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n who holds the first copyright for \u201cEMAIL\u201d\u2014a system he began building in<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 1978 at just 14 years of age. It was modeled after the communication<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n system being used at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in Newark,<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n New Jersey. His task: replicate the University\u2019s traditional mail<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n system electronically.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n And with that, email\u2014as we currently know it\u2014was born.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n In 1981, Shiva took honors at the Westinghouse Science Awards for his<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cHigh Reliability, Network-Wide, Electronic Mail System\u201d and attended<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n MIT later that fall. The copyright for the term EMAIL was granted to<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Shiva in 1982, after which he won a White House competition for<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n developing a system to automatically analyze and sort email messages.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n That technology eventually became the basis for EchoMail<\/a>, a service used by several large businesses.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Credit to:\u00a0 Doug Aamoth – Time Techland Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n