The outlook’s still good: 29 years of email [Infographic]

Email turns 29 this year. That’s right, the medium so few of us can do without has been around for the best part of three decades. On the 30th of August 1982 the “EMAIL” copyright was awarded to V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai.

Shiva began work on his standard template system for the drafting of electronic documents in 1978 at the tender age of 14. He was later challenged by a professor from a local university to digitise an internal paper memo system. This is where we get the terms ‘To:’, ‘From:’, ‘Date:’, ‘Subject:’, ‘Cc:’, ‘Bcc:’ and ‘Attachment’, as they were an integral part of the professor’s memo systems. Carbon Copy and Attachments were once physical actions which office secretaries had to perform.

Shiva then sent in his application for copyright and it was awarded two years later. Email has recently come under fire from Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg who stated, “email is dead” and “We don’t think that a modern messaging system is going to be email”. Ironically, Facebook recently launched an “@Facebook” email system to compete with Google’s email offering Gmail.

The full and unabridged history of email, as well as Shiva’s story can be found on his website. The infographic below also breaks down the history of email.