You probably think you know the answer. If you grew up with a computer in the 90s, you were likely told one name. If you follow tech lawsuits and Twitter drama, you might have heard another. Honestly, the question of who invented email isn't as simple as a single date on a calendar or a patent filing. It’s a fight. A loud, litigious, and weirdly emotional fight that spans decades of computing history.
Back in 1971, a quiet engineer named Ray Tomlinson was messing around with some code. He wasn't trying to change the world. He was just trying to get two computers to talk to each other. At the time, "mail" existed, but it was basically just digital sticky notes left on a shared computer. You couldn't send something to someone else's machine. Tomlinson changed that. He picked the @ symbol out of thin air because it made sense—user at host. That was the spark.
But then there is Shiva Ayyadurai. In the late 70s, as a high school student in New Jersey, he built a system for a medical university. He called it "EMAIL." He even got a copyright for it in 1982. He argues that Tomlinson just did "text messaging," while he built the actual "system" we recognize today with Inboxes, Outboxes, and Attachments.
Who’s right? It depends on how you define the word.
The ARPANET Days and the @ Symbol
To understand the origins, you have to go back to BBN Technologies. This was the powerhouse of early internet development. Ray Tomlinson was working on the ARPANET, the precursor to the internet we use to scroll through TikTok today.
Before Ray, if you wanted to leave a message for a colleague, you used a program like SNDMSG. The catch? You both had to use the same computer. It was essentially a shared file. Ray had the idea to combine SNDMSG with a file transfer protocol called CPYNET.
Why does this matter? Because it allowed messages to travel across a network.
He needed a way to separate the user’s name from the machine’s name. He looked down at his Model 33 Teletype keyboard. The @ sign was right there. It was rarely used, so it wouldn't confuse the system. It was perfect. The first email was sent between two machines sitting right next to each other. Ray reportedly doesn't even remember what the message said. It was likely something boring, like "QWERTYUIOP" or a random string of test characters.
He didn't think it was a big deal. He told a colleague, Jerry Burchfiel, "Don't tell anyone! This isn't what we're supposed to be working on."
Imagine that. The guy who basically created the foundation of modern communication thought he might get in trouble for it. It wasn't a product launch. There was no keynote speech. It was just a hack that worked.
The "EMAIL" System and the 1978 Claim
Fast forward a few years. In 1978, V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai was a 14-year-old prodigy working at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ). He was tasked with digitizing the paper-based interoffice mail system.
He wrote 50,000 lines of Fortran code. He included features that we take for granted now:
- To, From, Cc, Bcc
- Subject lines
- The actual "Inbox" and "Outbox" folders
- The "Drafts" folder
- Address books
He named his program "EMAIL." In 1982, the U.S. Copyright Office granted him the first official copyright for the term.
This is where the controversy gets heated. Shiva and his supporters argue that what Tomlinson did was "electronic messaging," not "email." They claim that "Email" is a specific system designed to replicate the office environment. If you look at it through that lens, Shiva’s claim has weight. He built a cohesive, user-friendly interface that mirrors what we use in Gmail or Outlook today.
However, the tech community at large—especially organizations like the Smithsonian and SIGCIS—mostly disagrees. They argue that the functionality of electronic mail was already being used and developed by dozens of people on the ARPANET throughout the 1970s.
Why the Smithsonian Got Involved
In 2012, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History accepted a donation of Shiva Ayyadurai's papers and code. The headlines screamed: "Smithsonian Admits Shiva Ayyadurai Invented Email."
The backlash was instant.
Historians from the Internet Society and former ARPANET engineers went ballistic. They argued that the Smithsonian was just preserving history, not validating a "first" claim. The museum eventually had to clarify that they weren't taking sides. They were just documenting a specific instance of software development in the late 70s.
It was a PR disaster. It showed just how protective people are over the "inventor" title.
The Evolution of Standards: RFCs and Protocols
If we want to get technical—and in tech, the "technical" is everything—we have to talk about RFCs (Request for Comments). These are the documents that define how the internet works.
By 1973, email was already 75% of all ARPANET traffic. People were obsessed with it.
- RFC 561: This was the first attempt to standardize the structure of an email, defining fields like "From" and "Date."
- RFC 733: Released in 1977, this was a massive step toward the modern email format.
- RFC 822: This 1982 document is the "bible" of email. It established the standards for ARPANET text messages that are still used as the foundation for the internet today.
None of these documents mention Shiva Ayyadurai. They were collaborative efforts by people like Ken Pogran, John Vittal, and many others. This is why the "Single Inventor" narrative is so hard to swallow for historians. Email wasn't a "Eureka!" moment in a bathtub. It was a slow-motion car crash of ideas that eventually formed a usable system.
The Semantic Battle
What are we actually asking when we ask who invented email?
If you mean "who sent the first message over a network using the @ symbol," it’s Ray Tomlinson. No question.
If you mean "who first used the specific term EMAIL and created a full-featured interoffice system," then Shiva Ayyadurai has a strong case for that specific piece of history.
But there are others too.
- The AUTODIN system: Used by the military in the 60s.
- The PLATO system: Used at the University of Illinois in the early 70s for online community messaging.
- The CTSS system: Created at MIT in 1965, allowing users to swap files on a single machine.
History is messy. People want a clean story. They want a "Steve Jobs" or a "Thomas Edison." But the internet wasn't built like that. It was built by a bunch of nerds in different cities trying to solve very specific, very boring problems.
Ray Tomlinson passed away in 2016. Until his last day, he was humble about his role. He didn't make millions off a patent. He just went back to work. Shiva Ayyadurai, on the other hand, is very much alive and very vocal. He has spent years campaigning to be recognized as the sole inventor. He even sued Gawker and Techdirt for saying he didn't invent it.
How Email Actually Became "Email"
The 80s were the turning point. Before then, you had to be a scientist or a student to use it. Then came the commercial providers.
Compuserve and AOL made it accessible. Suddenly, you didn't need to know how to use a command-line interface. You just had to wait for the "You've Got Mail" sound. This was the era of the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), which launched in 1982. This protocol is the secret sauce. It’s what allowed different networks to finally talk to each other.
Before SMTP, you couldn't easily send a message from one company's network to another. It was like having a phone that could only call people who used the same service provider. SMTP broke down the walls.
The Dark Side of the Invention: Spam
We can't talk about the invention of email without mentioning the first time someone ruined it.
In 1978, a marketing manager for Digital Equipment Corp named Gary Thuerk sent a mass message to 400 people on the ARPANET to promote a new computer. People were furious. It was the first "spam" email.
Gary is often called the "Father of Spam." It’s a title he seems strangely proud of. It proves that as soon as we had a way to talk to each other for free, someone immediately tried to sell us something.
What Does This Mean for You?
Understanding who invented email isn't just a trivia fact. It’s a lesson in how technology evolves. No one person owns the internet. It’s a stack of ideas, each one built on the failures of the one before it.
If you're a developer or a student, the takeaway is simple: your "small" fix might be the next @ symbol. Ray Tomlinson wasn't trying to be famous. He was just trying to save time.
Actionable Takeaways for Modern Email Users
Since you've waded through the history, here is how you can actually respect the medium today:
- Audit your security: Use a hardware key (like a YubiKey) for your primary email account. Because email is the "skeleton key" to your entire digital life, passwords aren't enough anymore.
- Clean your headers: If you're a business owner, check your DMARC and DKIM settings. These are the modern evolutions of those 1970s protocols that ensure your mail actually hits the inbox and isn't marked as spam.
- Think about the archive: Most of the early emails from the 70s are gone forever because nobody thought to save them. If you have important family or business correspondence, don't rely on a cloud provider. Export your data periodically (Google Takeout is great for this).
- Acknowledge the complexity: Next time someone asks who invented email, don't just give a one-word answer. Tell them about the @ symbol, the 1982 copyright, and the 50,000 lines of Fortran code.
Email is the most resilient technology we have. Social networks die. Apps fade. But email—this weird, clunky, 50-year-old invention—is still the heartbeat of the world. Whether it started in 1971 or 1978, it's not going anywhere.