[ih] "40 years on, the Internet transmits every aspect of our lives" (SF Chronicle / SFGATE)

[John Day]

Yea, not to play one-upmanship, But in 1951 Illinois had a contract with the US Army to build a machine that was called ORDVAC, a vacuum tube machine.   The contract allowed them to build a copy for themselves which was called Illiac I.  (It and Illiac II, a transistor machine, used asynchronous logic.)

I was really surprised to read (on the Illiac I wiki page) that between delivering ORDVAC and getting Illiac I built they had a leased line to ORDVAC for time on the machine at night. 

I have no idea what that means!  Was it for transferring paper tape that an operator then took and entered into the machine or what! ;-) Or was it directly loaded to the machine?  No idea.  But everyone was trying to do it fairly soon.

John

  
> On Aug 28, 2016, at 00:15, Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 28/08/2016 09:18, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>> JANET only started in 1984*, but years before that UK physicists were telecommuting
>> to CERN. 
>> 
>> JANET's predecessor was called SRCnet aka SERCnet and was active from 1974.
>> Its CERN link started before May 1975**.
> 
> ... in 1972, in fact:
> 
> "Computing by telephone
> ...
> The CERN link which can be used
> by UK teams who are involved in
> experiments at the PS and ISR is
> obviously more costly being of the
> order of £14 000 per year.
> ...
> 'Dial a computer' seems to be
> with us."
> 
> - CERN Courier, Vol. 12 No. 12, p421-422, Dec. 1972.
> 
> That was a remote login and RJE connection to the 360/195 at Rutherford Lab in
> the UK. A SERCnet (pre-JANET) packet switch was installed at CERN in 1982,
> according to the Rutherford Lab report:
> http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/ca/literature/annual_reports/p018.htm
> 
> I see that SRCnet apparently interconnected to ARPANET in 1975, too:
> http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/cisd/literature/p002.htm
> 
> Enough Googling for one day.
> 
>   Brian Carpenter
> 
>> 
>> I just discovered a very interesting PhD thesis: "From Diversity to Convergence:
>> British Computer Networks and the Internet, 1970-1995", Dorian James Rutter,
>> University of Warwick, 2005.
>> wrap.warwick.ac.uk/1197/1/WRAP_THESIS_Rutter_2005.pdf
>> 
>> Lots of gems in there.
>> 
>>    Brian Carpenter
>> 
>> * http://jam.ja.net/marketing/janet30years/
>> 
>> ** I can't find an exact date but I did find a CERN archive document stating that
>> a Philips cassette recorder went missing from "Rutherford Link Bldg. 513 ( S S )"
>> in May 1975. That would be the modem room in the basement of the computer centre,
>> which was part of my job responsibility ten years later.
>> 
>> Regards
>>   Brian
>> 
>> On 28/08/2016 07:59, John Day wrote:
>>> Does this qualify for internetworking?  I may have beat you by a few months.  ;-)
>>> 
>>> In late June of 1976, I moved to Houston so my wife could post-doc at Baylor College of Medicine. I was still working at Illinois with the ARPANET group there. (I even have a t-shirt that says University of Illinois at Houston.) ;-) I rented a DecWriter and dialed-in to Telenet, connected to Multics and from their connected to Illinois over the ARPANET.  ;-)  Did that daily for about 2 years, except when I would go back up to Urbana for a couple of days. I was definitely one of the earliest telecommuters but not the first. I think that was John Melvin.
>>> 
>>> Take care,
>>> John Day
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Aug 27, 2016, at 15:25, Paul Vixie <paul at redbarn.org> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> richard bennett and i were quoted here (published today).
>>>> 
>>>> http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/40-years-on-the-Internet-transmits-every-aspect-9187484.php
>>>> 
>>>> (sent in partial recompense for my recent off-topic postings here.)
>>>> 
>>>> -- 
>>>> P Vixie
>>>> _______
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>>> 
>>> 
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>