"Did Ayyadurai really invent email? He claims to have created the idea — literally calling his product EMAIL — as a teenager in New Jersey in 1980. However, as this detailed site explains, there have been a number of versions of email since the early days of the internet and ARPANET. Queen Elizabeth II of England sent her first email in 1976 and Jimmy Carter used email that same year for internal communications. In short, the claim is ridiculous."