"The idea was that the rooster would have brought your mail, but the snake ate it first," he said.
#Eudora welty library hours software#
Her agent, Timothy Seldes, said the author had been "pleased and amused" to hear of the tribute.īut comments about the name of the program paled in comparison with what Dorner calls his "snake mail." He had used a picture of a rooster with an envelope in its beak to announce new mail on his software program, but he needed somethingĮlse to indicate that no mail was waiting. "Embarrassed." He has never spoken with Welty. Having named my program after a living person. Not because I don't think it's a good name, but because I feel presumptuous "If I'd had any inkling that this program was going to be as successful as it has been," he said, "I would not have named it Eudora. Others thought he had named it for himself - the "dor" in Eudora representing the "Dor" Hint he gave, and the name elicited "all kinds of strange etymologies." Some thought it was a combination of Greek letters. Working on e-mail day and night, he said, "I felt like I lived at the post office," so he named his program Eudora and transposed the short story title into the slogan "Bringing the P.O. When he needed a name for the electronic mail system he was designing, a short story by Eudora Welty came to mind. Charles, Ill., he once wanted to write fiction, but he ended up writing computer software instead. "To have other people use and enjoy your program is probably what a certain breed of programmer is really interested in," Dorner said. He was working at the time, in the 1980's, on the computing staff of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which gave both the Eudora and PH software away.
On a cold winter morning, Dorner brewed tea in the tiny office that used to be his woodworking shop and explained how an inventor of software used by millions could end up neither rich nor famous. Out of range of the noise, Dorner, the man who invented Eudora, the e-mail software used by 18 million people, was at work in his backyard office, intense and, as always, alone.Īt 34, Dorner has to his credit not only Eudora, but also PH, an E-mail and telephone directory program used by hundreds of universities and corporations all over the world. A hedgehog ran under the sofa in Steve and Cindy Dorner's living room, dodging children and visitors, while two large tropicalīirds gave a running commentary. For Inventor of Eudora, Great Fame, No Fortune