Book People Archive

Re: ARPANET Records (fwd)

Jose Menendez wrote:
> Michael Hart wrote:
> 
> > Today there are over a billion people reportedly on the 
> > Internet who send and receive various kinds of emails and 
> > files.
>
> How is that relevant to what existed in 1971?

Well it is.  Count the people who use the so-called "Internet" 
today, and trace who their predecessors in 1971 were.  Most 
descriptions of "the history of the Internet" are based on a 
definition of "the Internet" as all networks connected by TCP/IP 
and the packet-switching technology introduced by Vint Cerf.  But 
even though TCP/IP is used to carry today's Internet traffic, most 
users today would feel more connected to the several hundred 
people who in 1971 used online time-sharing computers for e-mail, 
online discussion, general programming, and sharing of data files, 
than to the handful of researchers who developed packet-switching 
technology.

In the 1980s, online discussions flourished on BITNET/EARN 
LISTSERVs (mailing lists on interconnected IBM mainframes), Usenet 
newsgroups (Unix computers with dial-up UUCP connections) and 
Fidonet (mostly MS-DOS personal computers and BBSes).  It was only 
towards the end of the 1980s that all of these online discussion 
subcultures merged and started to use TCP/IP as a carrier.  
Because it was only then that the TCP/IP Internet had matured and 
come out of the laboratories, largely thanks to Cisco.  Members of 
the Bookpeople list wouldn't see much difference between 1986 and 
2006.  The underlying packet-switching isn't all that important.

> I have a suggestion for you, Michael. Look up when "email" was 
> invented. When you find out, let us know. Here's a place to 
> start looking:
> 
> A Brief History of the Internet
> http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml
> 
> The authors of that article are Barry Leiner, Vint Cerf, David 
> Clark, Robert Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel Lynch, Jon Postel, 
> Larry Roberts, and Stephen Wolff. Perhaps you've heard of them. 
> Here's a brief excerpt:

See, these are exactly the "packet-switching guys".  They're not 
historians.

> "It was also in 1972 that the initial 'hot' application, 
> electronic mail, was introduced. In March Ray Tomlinson at BBN 
> wrote the basic email message send and read software, motivated 
> by the need of the ARPANET developers for an easy coordination 
> mechanism.

Yes, that's when e-mail was introduced *on the ARPAnet* (that 
later became the Internet).  But e-mail existed in 1965, as 
documented here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail

The earliest e-mail systems are about as old as time-sharing 
operating systems and used a single multi-user mainframe, or 
several interconnected mainframes.

Contrary to common belief, Vint Cerf did not invent the computer.
And the Internet is about people, not about packet-switching.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars@[redacted]
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se