washington the obituaries all cited raymond tomlinson who died over the weekend as the inventor of email but out in the cold in cambridge massachusetts shiva ayyadurai bristled a few eulogies were a little more nuanced noting specifically that the new yorkborn tomlinson is widely recognized for selecting the symbol to connect a username with the destination address email making it a central part of the communications process even gmail was guarded tweeting thank you ray tomlinson for inventing email and putting the sign on the map rip but that was of little comfort to the mumbaiborn ayyadurai who emigrated to the us with his family when he was only seven and has been fighting an epic battle to be recognized as the primary inventor of email as we know it when he was only 14 im the lowcaste darkskinned indian who did invent email not raytheon who profits from war death and lies he raged in one tweet a few hours tomlinsons death referring to the deceased mans employer bestknown as an armaments company a few supportive tweets recognized his claims the truth will prevail have no doubt about that your insightful invention has changed the world credit will go where it is due one supporter tweeted another came from his own spouse the actress comedian fran drescher who wrote every1 honest knos shiva ayyadurai vashiva invented has copyright is a victim of racism ayyadurai himself noted today is mahashivaratri the night of truth justice over ignorance fitting that raytheons lies about email and tomlinson died today so what is the truth the facts are that shiva ayyadurai does have the first us copyright for email or computer program for electronic mail system in 1982 numerous awards and honors recognize his work from a westinghouse science talent search honors award for creating email in 1981 to the smithsonian national museum of american history accepted his code papers and artifacts demonstrating his work on email and while he may not have written the first email program or code he is recognized in some quarters as the first to devise the form closest to todays email on commission from the brookhaven national laboratory a sham he is not as attested by number others honors that are undisputed but missing from the scroll is the official recognition from the government and the tech community at large which says he only capitalized on the infrastructure provided by the military and other pioneers including tomlinson to make some contributions in the advancement of electronic mail as we know it today in interviews ayyadurai has argued that as a 14year old in new jersey in 1978 he not only had no access to the early technologies that were strictly in the military domain he didnt need their parts their protocol or the internet his work centered on using local area networks and ethernet cords what tomlinson did ayyadurai clarifies is send text messages between computers it is also an obvious