Introduction - If you have any usage issues, please Google them yourself
The RSA algorithm was publicly described in 1977 by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman at MIT the letters RSA are the initials of their surnames, listed in the same order as on the paper.
MIT was granted U.S. Patent 4,405,829 for a "Cryptographic communications system and method" that used the algorithm in 1983.