[chapter-delegates] How about a World Internet Day?

[Marie-Anne Delahaut]

Dear Fred and you all,

It is a good idea and this dialogue is wonderful... But what is the date
indeed ?

Let me also tell you a souvenir about our firs attempts of
telecommunications. I will try to write it in English so, please excuse my
misspellings.

We had created, with the Destree Institute, a network called "Francité"
(about French culture) between French speaking regions in Europe and Quebec
in Canada.
We organized many events, realized studies and had content to share.

The 14th of July 1989 was a special date as the bicentury date of the French
Revolution. So we went to Paris, had a the first floor of the Eiffel Tower
for us to share our experiment as guests of the official cocktail
personalities. We were to create the event with our computer, sending an
order and receiving, in answer, a file from another computer situated in
Charleroi (Wallonia, Belgium, 300km away) connected with (how was it
called?) a modem (DOS signs on a black screen, remember the fear and the
heartbeat when the special sign stopped answering, I mean when the dash
blinked and we had to understand it was dead).

It always makes me thing to what our grand-parents had to do during World
War2, while they were listening to the radio, sending and receiving
information to/from the Allied forces about their own Resistance forces :
the story says they had to lift their feet from the ground while
listening...

So we had already taken all our material (computer 286 + screen + modem +
cables, etc). We had installed everything and the waiters were already
preparing the cocktail in the Eiffel Tower. And the connection did not work.
Imagine. We called our connection center in Charleroi, Philippe on the phone
and me in front of the screen. We tried every detail and the answers were
OK. Then she said something like this : well, this code says that the
connection between your cable and the phone line does not work! 

So we called a waiter of the Eiffel Tower, asked him to meet a technician.
He had his toasts to prepare, we insisted, he called somebody who came, had
a look to the special thing connecting the PC cable to the phone line, he
said "oh yes, it is broken", ran out somewhere, came back with another
device, and the official delegate was already there, asking us if he could
begin his speech. I was trembling, really. 

The official French delegate made his speech, talked of the French
Revolution and of our special demonstration. Everybody came around the
computer and ... me. I sent a request to *the* other computer in Charleroi
about *the* file chosen by the assembly and... it worked, our colleague in
Charleroi was ready, opened the connection and we received the file (we had
taken care, beforehand, to show that that special file was not already on
our computer in Paris, even if we had a sad feeling that most people there
did not believe us or even did not understand anything of what we tried to
tell them). Anyway, it worked. 
We received the file. Applauses (it was a cocktail, really). I showed the
file on the screen and Philippe began to read some of the information, in
fact a famous CV of an important person present in the assembly. It was a
wonderful technological event. Some of us understood it. But that special
person was angry, indeed, because we told his birth date and he did not
appreciate the detail... He is gone now, peace to him.
The cocktail went on and we had the feeling of a great realization, among
lots of people happy - as we were - of the bicentury our French Revolution.
We had to take all our material down , with so many people going down at the
same time. The Eiffel Tower was sparkling with millions of lights, the
weather was beautiful and Paris like a dream when it becomes reality. It is
a wonderful souvenir.

Thank you for believing me ;-) and ... cheers !

Marie-Anne

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Fred Baker [mailto:fred at cisco.com] 
> Sent: vendredi 20 mai 2005 21:36
> To: Ramon Morales
> Cc: Robert Kahn; 'Alejandro Pisanty'; andreu at veabaro.info; 
> braden at isi.edu; 'Vinton G. Cerf'; chapter-delegates at lists.isoc.org
> Subject: Re: [chapter-delegates] How about a World Internet Day?
> 
> 
> > I believe it would be a great idea to establish a World 
> Internet Day 
> > marking some specific event in Internet History or simply 
> celebrating 
> > the Internet's importance.
> 
> We could use the date of the first attempted login from UCLA to PARC:
> 
> 	Scene: Bob Braden is sitting at a computer keyboard near an IMP 
> connected to the one-and-only
> 	line in the Internet, which runs at 9600 bps. He is 
> surrounded by 
> expectant onlookers. Via
> 	telephone, they are connected to Xerox Palo Alto 
> Research Center 
> (PARC), where the *other*
> 	IMP and computer are. They plan to attempt to log into 
> said computer. 
> Bob speaks into the phone:
> 
> 	Braden: "I'm about to send an 'L'"
> 	voice:  "copy, you are about to send an 'L'"
> 		--- click ---
> 	Braden: "I sent the 'L'"
> 	voice:  "we saw the 'L'"
> 
> 	Braden: "I'm about to send an 'O'"
> 	voice:  "copy, you are about to send an 'O'"
> 		--- click ---
> 	Braden: "I sent the 'O'"
> 	voice:  "we saw the 'O'"
> 
> 	Braden: "I'm about to send an 'G'"
> 	voice:  "copy, you are about to send an 'G'"
> 		--- click ---
> 	Braden: "I sent the 'G'"
> 	voice:  "hang on... the computer crashed..."
> 
> Per Len Kleinrock, the first message sent over the Internet :^)
>