From brian at platopeople.com Wed Dec 4 15:12:43 2002 From: brian at platopeople.com (Brian Dear) Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 15:12:43 -0800 Subject: [ih] Author's inquiry re: PLATO/CERL/ARPAnet Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20021204150445.00a9d4d0@mail.meer.net> To the internet-history list: I'm writing a book on the history of the PLATO system, developed at the University of Illinois from 1960 through the 80s, and funded by ARPA, ONR, and NSF as well as Control Data Corporation. I'm interested in hearing from Internet pioneers who were familiar with PLATO, had seen PLATO demos, knew people who worked at the CERL lab, or otherwise have information, opinions, or anecdotes about the PLATO system. The PLATO story is for all intents and purposes completely unknown*, as there has never been a book that details the whole story of not only the people behind the system and how it was designed and built, but also, and more importantly from my perspective, about the "culture" that grew up around PLATO almost overnight in the early 1970s and turned into a rich, vibrant online community that was to be profoundly influential to thousands of people from all walks of life. Many user-to-user communications capabilities taken for granted today were either created or were first widely used on the PLATO system: instant messaging, chat rooms, email, message forums, MUDs and other multi-player games. See www.platopeople.com for more info on my book project. Any info, recollections, anecdotes, or opinions about PLATO from Internet/ARPANET old-timers would be welcome and appreciated! Thanks, - Brian Brian Dear PLATO History Book Project La Jolla, CA brian at platopeople.com www.platopeople.com *for instance: Out of the thousands of RFC documents, the ONLY RFC document that is not available online in full-text form in any of the RFC repositories is RFC600 -- a December 1973 proposal on how to connect an "Illinois Plasma Terminal" to the ARPANET.... I finally got a copy of RFC600 but it took some hunting. From rms46 at vLSM.org Sun Dec 8 18:47:48 2002 From: rms46 at vLSM.org (Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim) Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2002 09:47:48 +0700 Subject: [ih] Author's inquiry re: PLATO/CERL/ARPAnet References: <5.1.0.14.2.20021204150445.00a9d4d0@mail.meer.net> Message-ID: <3DF40454.332D9D1D@vLSM.org> Brian Dear wrote: > I'm writing a book on the history of the PLATO system, developed at the > University of Illinois from 1960 through the 80s, and funded by ARPA, ONR, > and NSF as well as Control Data Corporation. I have never used PLATO, but I was using UIUC's Notes until the mid 1990s. regards, -- Rahmat M. Samik-Ibrahim -- vLSM.org -- http://rms46.vLSM.org -- By The Way: RedHat Chili Peppers Lonely Heart Club Band --------- From Elisabeth.Porteneuve at cetp.ipsl.fr Tue Dec 10 02:59:25 2002 From: Elisabeth.Porteneuve at cetp.ipsl.fr (Elisabeth Porteneuve) Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 11:59:25 +0100 (MET) Subject: [ih] Usage of the name NIC Message-ID: <200212101059.LAA16098@balsa.cetp.ipsl.fr> Greetings: I am looking for history of usage of the name NIC. Do you have any souvenir/note/email when the name NIC started to be used by countries (ccTLD) ? I digged old RFCs (and even old paper Sun OS document ...), no doubt about SRI-NIC at the origin, what I am interested is the history of "nic" used by its successors. Kind regards, Elisabeth Porteneuve From day at std.com Tue Dec 10 04:59:06 2002 From: day at std.com (John Day) Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 07:59:06 -0500 Subject: [ih] Usage of the name NIC In-Reply-To: <200212101059.LAA16098@balsa.cetp.ipsl.fr> References: <200212101059.LAA16098@balsa.cetp.ipsl.fr> Message-ID: At 11:59 +0100 12/10/02, Elisabeth Porteneuve wrote: >Greetings: > >I am looking for history of usage of the name NIC. >Do you have any souvenir/note/email when the name NIC >started to be used by countries (ccTLD) ? > >I digged old RFCs (and even old paper Sun OS document ...), >no doubt about SRI-NIC at the origin, what I am interested >is the history of "nic" used by its successors. NIC was the Network Information Center aka Doug Englebart's group at SRI using NLS. The NIC had a whole system set up for handling ARPANet documents. At one time I had a NIC handbook with all of the information. You could access all of the document through NLS. You might want to speak to Jake Feinler. Take care, John Day From aca at cs.utexas.edu Wed Dec 11 08:13:40 2002 From: aca at cs.utexas.edu (Adriana C. Arrington) Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 10:13:40 -0600 (CST) Subject: [ih] ARPANET Telnet design story Message-ID: Hello, I am continuing the research for the technical history of Telnet with Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan for the THINK Protocols project. The goal of THIS email is to solicit some stories, opinions, regrets, deadends, etc. on the design (or early usage) of the Telnet protocol, that would add the personal touch to the story, help engage the novice reader in the subject, and perhaps better explain some decisions made in the development of the protocol. The time frame for the story is mainly between 1968 and 1973, but any experiences after 1973 are also welcome. I have included the outline of the story as a reference, and in case you are interested, the URL to the current version of the story: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/chris/think/Project_Management/F2002/aca/CurrentTelnet.html Thanks, Adriana Arrington ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The Design of the Telnet Protocol for the ARPANET Outline December 5, 2002 -Introduction -The State of Networking and the Struggle to Organize (ARPANET introduction) -Ad-hoc Telnet: The First Attempts at Demonstrating Remote Login on the ARPANET (Late 1969) -The Old Telnet Protocol (1971 - 1973) =Why Telnet Became a Protocol =First Issues in the Effort to Standardize (Early 1971) +The Need for a Consistent Character Set +To Echo or Not to Echo +The Trouble with Interrupt Handling on the Server Side +Making the Telnet Connection =The Necessity of the Network Virtual Terminal and the N^2 Problem =The Experience with Old Telnet (1973) +Asymmetrical Control Structure +Little Room for Expanding the Number of Control Functions and Options +The Problem with the Character-at-a-Time and Line-at-a-Time Hosts (what follows has yet to be written) -The New Telnet Protocol (1973 - 1980) =The More Symmetrical Telnet: WILL, WONT, DO, DONT =Negotiated Options - A Key Concept =Solving the Echoing Problem =Expanding the Set of Control Functions with IAC =Help for Half-Duplex Systems: The Go-Ahead Control Function =Comments and Experiences with the New Implementation -Conclusion =Summary =Relationship between the ARPANET Telnet and Today's Telnet From braden at ISI.EDU Fri Dec 13 14:37:51 2002 From: braden at ISI.EDU (Bob Braden) Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 22:37:51 GMT Subject: [ih] Re: internet-history digest, Vol 1 #75 - 1 msg Message-ID: <200212132237.WAA17523@gra.isi.edu> *> *> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- *> The Design of the Telnet Protocol for the ARPANET *> Outline *> December 5, 2002 *> *> -Introduction *> *> -The State of Networking and the Struggle to Organize (ARPANET *> introduction) *> *> -Ad-hoc Telnet: The First Attempts at Demonstrating Remote *> Login on the ARPANET (Late 1969) *> *> -The Old Telnet Protocol (1971 - 1973) *> =Why Telnet Became a Protocol *> =First Issues in the Effort to Standardize (Early 1971) *> +The Need for a Consistent Character Set *> +To Echo or Not to Echo The end-of-line problem: CR, LF, CR LF, or ...? *> +The Trouble with Interrupt Handling on the Server Side *> +Making the Telnet Connection *> =The Necessity of the Network Virtual Terminal and the N^2 Problem *> =The Experience with Old Telnet (1973) *> +Asymmetrical Control Structure *> +Little Room for Expanding the Number of Control Functions and Options *> +The Problem with the Character-at-a-Time and Line-at-a-Time Hosts *> *> (what follows has yet to be written) *> -The New Telnet Protocol (1973 - 1980) *> =The More Symmetrical Telnet: WILL, WONT, DO, DONT *> =Negotiated Options - A Key Concept *> =Solving the Echoing Problem *> =Expanding the Set of Control Functions with IAC *> =Help for Half-Duplex Systems: The Go-Ahead Control Function *> =Comments and Experiences with the New Implementation *> *> -Conclusion *> =Summary *> =Relationship between the ARPANET Telnet and Today's Telnet *> *> *> *> *> *> *> *> *> *> *> *> --__--__-- *> *> _______________________________________________ *> internet-history mailing list *> internet-history at postel.org *> http://www.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history *> *> *> End of internet-history Digest *> From braden at ISI.EDU Sat Dec 14 10:08:38 2002 From: braden at ISI.EDU (Bob Braden) Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 10:08:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [ih] The 20th anniversary of the Internet Message-ID: <200212141808.gBEI8cY21511@boreas.isi.edu> We ought not to let pass unnoticed the impending 20th anniversary of the Internet. The most logical date of origin of the Internet is January 1, 1983, when the ARPANET officially switched from the NCP protocol to TCP/IP. Six months later, the ARPANET was split into the two subnets ARPANET and MILNET, which were connected by Internet gateways* (routers). The planning for the January 1983 switchover was fully documented in Jon Postel in RFC 801. The week-by-week progress of the transition was reported in a series of 15 RFCs, in the range RFC 842 - RFC 876, by UCLA student David Smallberg. There may still be a few remaining T shirts that read, "I Survived the TCP/IP Transition". People sometimes question that any geeks would have been in machine rooms on January 1. Believe it!! Some geeks got very little sleep for a few days (and that was before the work "geek" was invented, I believe.) So, on New Year's Eve, hoist one for the 20th anniversary of the Internet. Bob Braden ____________________________________________________ * Routers brought to you by Bob Hinden of BBN. ** Prominent survivors included Dan Lynch of Interop fame. And of course Vint Cerf was working the Levers of Power at ARPA. From the.map at alum.mit.edu Sat Dec 14 14:34:21 2002 From: the.map at alum.mit.edu (Mike Padlipsky) Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 14:34:21 -0800 Subject: [ih] The 20th anniversary of the Internet In-Reply-To: <200212141808.gBEI8cY21511@boreas.isi.edu> Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.1.20021214141827.01c90a20@mail.lafn.org> At 10:08 AM 12/14/02, Bob Braden wrote: >and that was before the work "geek" >was invented, I believe from http://www.bartleby.com/61/0/G0070000.html : Our word geek is now chiefly associated with student and computer slang; one probably thinks first of a computer geek. In origin, however, it is one of the words American English borrowed from the vocabulary of the circus, which was a much more significant source of entertainment in the United States in the 19th and early 20th century than it is now. Large numbers of traveling circuses left a cultural legacy in various and sometimes unexpected ways. For example, Superman and other comic book superheroes owe much of their look to circus acrobats, who were similarly costumed in capes and tights. The circus sideshow is the source of the word geek, "a performer who engaged in bizarre acts, such as biting the head off a live chicken." [from http://www.metamaze.com/January.html : On Wednesday, January 20, 1982: Ozzy Osbourne, 34, bit the head off a live bat that was thrown at him on stage, during a performance.] cheers, map [whose shoulder problems caused him to break down some time ago and create a 'signature' file to apologize for the lack of his formerly customary e-volubility -- and who's been employing shiftless typing for a long time now to spare his wristsnfingers, in case you didn't know ... and who's further broken down and done http://www.lafn.org/~ba213/mapstuff.html , rather grudgingly] From crawdad at fnal.gov Mon Dec 16 07:45:31 2002 From: crawdad at fnal.gov (Matt Crawford) Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 09:45:31 -0600 Subject: [ih] Re: The 20th anniversary of the Internet In-Reply-To: "14 Dec 2002 10:08:38 PST." <200212141808.gBEI8cY21511@boreas.isi.edu> Message-ID: <200212161545.gBGFjVg24202@gungnir.fnal.gov> > have been in machine rooms on January 1. Believe it!! Some geeks got > very little sleep for a few days (and that was before the work "geek" > was invented, I believe.) The word goes back much, much longer, but not exactly in the modern sense. A geek was a circus performer who would do disgusting things, like bite the head off a live chicken. Matt Crawford internet newbie: started on milnet in 1984 From craig at aland.bbn.com Mon Dec 16 08:00:26 2002 From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge) Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 11:00:26 -0500 Subject: [ih] Re: The 20th anniversary of the Internet In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 16 Dec 2002 09:45:31 CST." <200212161545.gBGFjVg24202@gungnir.fnal.gov> Message-ID: <200212161600.gBGG0Q7f023601@aland.bbn.com> In message <200212161545.gBGFjVg24202 at gungnir.fnal.gov>, Matt Crawford writes: >The word goes back much, much longer, but not exactly in the modern >sense. A geek was a circus performer who would do disgusting things, >like bite the head off a live chicken. And the word is derived from late ME "geck", which is derived from a Low Dutch word meaning simpleton or fool. Craig From aszul at gwu.edu Mon Dec 16 12:11:47 2002 From: aszul at gwu.edu (Szul, Andy C.) Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2002 15:11:47 -0500 Subject: [ih] 20th Anniversary Celebrations sites Message-ID: <3DFF9C16@newman> Folks, Any [biggie] Web sites that offer information/links about the 20th anniversary celebrations? I'd like to share the links with my students. Thanks, -Andy From brian at platopeople.com Thu Dec 19 10:56:57 2002 From: brian at platopeople.com (Brian Dear) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 10:56:57 -0800 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20021219105526.01d7e500@mail.meer.net> Hi, Does anyone know the date that the Unix "talk" command originally appeared, and on what version/platform of Unix, and also if there's an RFC on it (I've not been able to locate one)? - Brian From touch at ISI.EDU Thu Dec 19 11:15:56 2002 From: touch at ISI.EDU (Joe Touch) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 11:15:56 -0800 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command References: <5.1.0.14.2.20021219105526.01d7e500@mail.meer.net> Message-ID: <3E021AEC.2040106@isi.edu> Brian Dear wrote: > Hi, > > Does anyone know the date that the Unix "talk" command originally > appeared, and on what version/platform of Unix, and also if there's an > RFC on it (I've not been able to locate one)? I would not expect an RFC: talk is between users on a single machine. RFCs tend to require inter-machine communication ;-) I.e., this may be Unix history, but not quite Internet history (though given we don't get that much traffic, and there's some overlap in expertise, it seems OK to ask). Joe From perry at piermont.com Thu Dec 19 11:20:33 2002 From: perry at piermont.com (Perry E. Metzger) Date: 19 Dec 2002 14:20:33 -0500 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20021219105526.01d7e500@mail.meer.net> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20021219105526.01d7e500@mail.meer.net> Message-ID: <87adj124u6.fsf@snark.piermont.com> Brian Dear writes: > Does anyone know the date that the Unix "talk" command originally > appeared, and on what version/platform of Unix, and also if there's an > RFC on it (I've not been able to locate one)? There is no RFC on it. The program originally appeared in BSD Unix -- I am almost certain it was in 4.2, though it might have appeared in an earlier interim release. You could track down the initial date on it pretty easily by looking at the online BSD sources at tuhs.org By the way, if you are looking into this as a way of attacking the stupid AOL IM patent, there is another good precedent -- the SEND command in SMTP and the programs that used it to produce an exact analog of AOL style IM. That one is indeed documented in RFC 821. Zephyr is also an excellent precedent, though much later. -- Perry E. Metzger perry at piermont.com From touch at ISI.EDU Thu Dec 19 11:24:43 2002 From: touch at ISI.EDU (Joe Touch) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 11:24:43 -0800 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command References: <5.1.0.14.2.20021219105526.01d7e500@mail.meer.net> <3E021AEC.2040106@isi.edu> Message-ID: <3E021CFB.7040506@isi.edu> Joe Touch wrote: > Brian Dear wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> Does anyone know the date that the Unix "talk" command originally >> appeared, and on what version/platform of Unix, and also if there's an >> RFC on it (I've not been able to locate one)? > > > I would not expect an RFC: talk is between users on a single machine. > RFCs tend to require inter-machine communication ;-) > > I.e., this may be Unix history, but not quite Internet history (though > given we don't get that much traffic, and there's some overlap in > expertise, it seems OK to ask). FWIW, it _has_ been a while since I used that one... It seems that talk works between machines these days. Though looking at the source code, there's less a 'protocol' than a TCP stream between two endpoints. I.e., it's nowhere as complex as telnet, which is spec'd as an RFC. Joe From brian at platopeople.com Thu Dec 19 11:26:38 2002 From: brian at platopeople.com (Brian Dear) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 11:26:38 -0800 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command In-Reply-To: <3E021CFB.7040506@isi.edu> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20021219105526.01d7e500@mail.meer.net> <3E021AEC.2040106@isi.edu> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20021219112520.01d58050@mail.meer.net> I've placed PLATO's TERM-talk terminal-to-terminal talking capability to 29 years ago today (see www.platopeople.com/termtalk.html) but I'm curious if there were other inter-terminal talking facilities up and running prior to that. Most likely candidate I figured was Unix's "talk" command. - Brian At 11:24 AM 12/19/02 -0800, Joe Touch wrote: >Joe Touch wrote: >>Brian Dear wrote: >> >>>Hi, >>> >>>Does anyone know the date that the Unix "talk" command originally >>>appeared, and on what version/platform of Unix, and also if there's an >>>RFC on it (I've not been able to locate one)? >> >>I would not expect an RFC: talk is between users on a single machine. >>RFCs tend to require inter-machine communication ;-) >>I.e., this may be Unix history, but not quite Internet history (though >>given we don't get that much traffic, and there's some overlap in >>expertise, it seems OK to ask). > >FWIW, it _has_ been a while since I used that one... > >It seems that talk works between machines these days. Though looking at >the source code, there's less a 'protocol' than a TCP stream between two >endpoints. > >I.e., it's nowhere as complex as telnet, which is spec'd as an RFC. > >Joe > > From buchheim at ISI.EDU Thu Dec 19 11:34:58 2002 From: buchheim at ISI.EDU (Tim Buchheim) Date: 19 Dec 2002 11:34:58 -0800 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command In-Reply-To: <3E021AEC.2040106@isi.edu> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20021219105526.01d7e500@mail.meer.net> <3E021AEC.2040106@isi.edu> Message-ID: <1040326498.1649.10.camel@ski.isi.edu> On Thu, 2002-12-19 at 11:15, Joe Touch wrote: > > Does anyone know the date that the Unix "talk" command originally > > appeared, and on what version/platform of Unix, and also if there's an > > RFC on it (I've not been able to locate one)? > > I would not expect an RFC: talk is between users on a single machine. > RFCs tend to require inter-machine communication ;-) Every version of talk which I've used (admittedly, they were all within the past ten years or so) has allowed talking to users on other machines. There are two variants: talk uses port 517, whereas ntalk uses port 518. (I think the "talk" which ships with RedHat Linux is actually an ntalk implementation.) The popular ytalk program supports both protocols. The older talk program is flawed in that some implementations use host byte order rather than network byte order, which makes talking between little-endian and big-endian machines a problem. (ytalk automatically senses the problem and swaps bytes as necessary.) the talk(1) man pages on both FreeBSD and RedHat Linux say that talk was released with 4.2BSD. -- Tim Buchheim From jnc at ginger.lcs.mit.edu Thu Dec 19 11:37:26 2002 From: jnc at ginger.lcs.mit.edu (J. Noel Chiappa) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 14:37:26 -0500 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command Message-ID: <200212191937.OAA19092@ginger.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Brian Dear > I've placed PLATO's TERM-talk terminal-to-terminal talking capability > to 29 years ago .. but I'm curious if there were other inter-terminal > talking facilities up and running prior to that. Most likely candidate > I figured was Unix's "talk" command. Oh, Unix would be pretty late. You need to check the dates on the ITS one, and the Multics one - not sure if CTSS had one. Noel From rogers at ISI.EDU Thu Dec 19 11:43:38 2002 From: rogers at ISI.EDU (Craig Milo Rogers) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 11:43:38 -0800 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 19 Dec 2002 11:15:56 PST." <3E021AEC.2040106@isi.edu> Message-ID: <12687.1040327018@ISI.EDU> >> Does anyone know the date that the Unix "talk" command originally >> appeared, and on what version/platform of Unix, and also if there's an >> RFC on it (I've not been able to locate one)? > >I would not expect an RFC: talk is between users on a single machine. >RFCs tend to require inter-machine communication ;-) > >I.e., this may be Unix history, but not quite Internet history (though >given we don't get that much traffic, and there's some overlap in >expertise, it seems OK to ask). Could we pretend that this was a query about the origin of the MSND command of FTP in RFC 765 (IEN 149), and generate a lively discussion on that basis? :-) I also note, whether germane or not, that RFC 1459 (Internet Relay Chat, IRC) describes a service which is the multi-system equivalent of "talk". Furthermore, I encountred instant line-by-line terminal communication between users (well, between users and the operator) in 1968 on the time-shared operating system running on the AN/FSQ-32 system at SDC in Santa Monica. Hmmm.. did Multics have a talk command before Unix? Good questiosn for research. :-) Craig Milo Rogers From gih at telstra.net Fri Dec 20 06:58:02 2002 From: gih at telstra.net (Geoff Huston) Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 01:58:02 +1100 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command In-Reply-To: <87adj124u6.fsf@snark.piermont.com> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20021219105526.01d7e500@mail.meer.net> <5.1.0.14.2.20021219105526.01d7e500@mail.meer.net> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20021221015545.015bcb88@kahuna.telstra.net> At 02:20 PM 12/19/2002 -0500, Perry E. Metzger wrote: >Brian Dear writes: > > Does anyone know the date that the Unix "talk" command originally > > appeared, and on what version/platform of Unix, and also if there's an > > RFC on it (I've not been able to locate one)? > >There is no RFC on it. The program originally appeared in BSD Unix -- >I am almost certain it was in 4.2, though it might have appeared in an >earlier interim release. You could track down the initial date on it >pretty easily by looking at the online BSD sources at tuhs.org I recall this functionality on early DecSystem10 systems around the 79 - 80 vintage, although I really don't recall whether it was a local hack or not. Geoff From buchheim at ISI.EDU Thu Dec 19 12:17:33 2002 From: buchheim at ISI.EDU (Tim Buchheim) Date: 19 Dec 2002 12:17:33 -0800 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command In-Reply-To: <1040326498.1649.10.camel@ski.isi.edu> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20021219105526.01d7e500@mail.meer.net> <3E021AEC.2040106@isi.edu> <1040326498.1649.10.camel@ski.isi.edu> Message-ID: <1040329053.1634.39.camel@ski.isi.edu> I've found some information on the actual protocol used by talk, if anyone is interested. Here's a page which provides some details for both the ntalk protocol and the older talk protocol. http://members.aol.com/chinyu/chitchat/faq-04.html It doesn't seem to have the constants the for type or answer fields, but you can find that in /usr/include/protocols/talkd.h (which can be found on FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and RedHat Linux at least) Note that while commands (invite/delete/announce/etc.) and responses are sent in the above format to UDP port 518 (or 517) the actual text is sent as a raw stream of characters over a separate TCP connection. -- Tim Buchheim From craig at aland.bbn.com Thu Dec 19 12:47:52 2002 From: craig at aland.bbn.com (Craig Partridge) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 15:47:52 -0500 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 19 Dec 2002 10:56:57 PST." <5.1.0.14.2.20021219105526.01d7e500@mail.meer.net> Message-ID: <200212192047.gBJKlq7f038712@aland.bbn.com> In message <5.1.0.14.2.20021219105526.01d7e500 at mail.meer.net>, Brian Dear write s: >Does anyone know the date that the Unix "talk" command originally appeared, >and on what version/platform of Unix, and also if there's an RFC on it >(I've not been able to locate one)? I believe talk and the talkd daemon appeared in 4.1c -- my recollection is that it was in the first SunOS software release, which came from 4.1c. However, the FreeBSD 4.6 talk man page say it arrived in 4.2 BSD. It was a hack -- not a designed protocol. Someone wanted to enable interactive communications between machines. One sign it was a hack -- it didn't specify byte ordering, with the result that as soon as Sun shipped talk and talkd, people promptly discovered that VAXen and Sun workstations talkd daemons couldn't communicate with each other. I can't recall if it was talk, or the networked version of write, that had the incredible misfeature that if you said "[talk/write] all" it attempted to contact all hosts in /etc/hosts -- that caused provoked an interesting reaction from DARPA when someone accidentally did it with a full host table, c. 1988. Craig From braden at ISI.EDU Thu Dec 19 12:51:13 2002 From: braden at ISI.EDU (Bob Braden) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 20:51:13 GMT Subject: [ih] Re: This history of "talk" Message-ID: <200212192051.UAA18637@gra.isi.edu> I believe that the "talk" program was one instantiation of the notion of "linking" users. Well, the original term was "linking teletypes". I suspect that every designer of an early timesharing system (re-?)invented this concept. Once you have a mechanism to pass typed characters to and from a user's teletype, it is obvious that you can use this as an inter-user communication mechanism, "linking" two user's erminals. This is a long time ago and I am a bit fuzzy, but I think I first saw the linkiong concept on John McCarthy's PDP/1 (?) time sharing system when I went to work at Stanford in 1966. It was certainly present in Englebart's NLS system in the mid 1970s, and I believe it existed in the ITS and Multics system, probably in the mid 1960s. As soon as you had teletype connectivity across the ARPAnet, it was obvious that you could just as easily link across the network. I believe this was a feature of Tenex, probably of TOPS 10 and TOPS 20. And I even implemented it on an IBM mainframe... ;-) Bob Braden From day at std.com Thu Dec 19 13:05:27 2002 From: day at std.com (John Day) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 16:05:27 -0500 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20021219112520.01d58050@mail.meer.net> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20021219105526.01d7e500@mail.meer.net> <3E021AEC.2040106@isi.edu> <5.1.0.14.2.20021219112520.01d58050@mail.meer.net> Message-ID: At 11:26 -0800 12/19/02, Brian Dear wrote: >I've placed PLATO's TERM-talk terminal-to-terminal talking >capability to 29 years ago today (see >www.platopeople.com/termtalk.html) but I'm curious if there were >other inter-terminal talking facilities up and running prior to >that. Most likely candidate I figured was Unix's "talk" command. Yes, Tenex had such a facility. You could link terminals. And we were using a network version implemented by Jim Calvin by 1972 or so. And I believe that it was demonstrated at the ICCC conf. John From cos at aaaaa.org Thu Dec 19 13:16:08 2002 From: cos at aaaaa.org (Ofer Inbar) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 16:16:08 -0500 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command In-Reply-To: <12687.1040327018@ISI.EDU>; from rogers@ISI.EDU on Thu, Dec 19, 2002 at 11:43:38AM -0800 References: <3E021AEC.2040106@isi.edu> <12687.1040327018@ISI.EDU> Message-ID: <20021219161608.O694@thwip.polyamory.org> Craig Milo Rogers wrote: > I also note, whether germane or not, that RFC 1459 (Internet Relay > Chat, IRC) describes a service which is the multi-system equivalent > of "talk". [...] IRC was very slow getting to RFC, and by the time 1459 was written it was in very widespread use. The original version of IRC was written in 1988 by Jarkko Oikarinen at the University of Oulu, Finland. That makes it a much later innovation than some of the others people are talking about here, in addition to being less IM-like. So, no, probably not relevant to the IM patent issue, but perhaps relevant to an internet-history thread about the history of talk. -- Cos (Ofer Inbar) -- cos at aaaaa.org http://cos.polyamory.org/ -- Exodus Communications -- cos at exodus.net http://www.exodus.net/ "OSI is a beautiful dream, and TCP/IP is living it!" -- Einar Stefferud , IETF mailing list, 12 May 1992 From dpreed at reed.com Thu Dec 19 13:35:48 2002 From: dpreed at reed.com (David P. Reed) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 16:35:48 -0500 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20021219112520.01d58050@mail.meer.net> References: <3E021CFB.7040506@isi.edu> <5.1.0.14.2.20021219105526.01d7e500@mail.meer.net> <3E021AEC.2040106@isi.edu> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.2.20021219162308.04e21008@mail.reed.com.> Englebart's NLS is one of the most important pieces of prior art here. It was working well in 1967. Licklider described his use of the original NLS in Scientific American in 1967. DTSS had something like this before 1970. We had stuff like this at MIT on nearly every timesharing system (including CTSS on the 7094, Multics, ITS). I think I helped build such a talk program on Multics as part of the SIPB system that I worked on under Bob Frankston's direction in 19769-1970. I helped write several others inter-user communications programs on Multics. I'm pretty sure I used it on CTSS in 1968. I think terminal-to-terminal talk was available on CP/CMS as well. I've asked Bob Frankston to corroborate. Bob probably can't post to ih, but I'll repost what he says about early terminal-to-terminal talk programs. All of these systems had "who" commands or otherwise let you list the users online as well. Some let you check who was on other machines, and some let you talk live across machine boundaries. At 11:26 AM 12/19/2002 -0800, Brian Dear wrote: >I've placed PLATO's TERM-talk terminal-to-terminal talking capability to >29 years ago today (see www.platopeople.com/termtalk.html) but I'm curious >if there were other inter-terminal talking facilities up and running prior >to that. Most likely candidate I figured was Unix's "talk" command. > >- Brian > > >At 11:24 AM 12/19/02 -0800, Joe Touch wrote: >>Joe Touch wrote: >>>Brian Dear wrote: >>> >>>>Hi, >>>> >>>>Does anyone know the date that the Unix "talk" command originally >>>>appeared, and on what version/platform of Unix, and also if there's an >>>>RFC on it (I've not been able to locate one)? >>> >>>I would not expect an RFC: talk is between users on a single machine. >>>RFCs tend to require inter-machine communication ;-) >>>I.e., this may be Unix history, but not quite Internet history (though >>>given we don't get that much traffic, and there's some overlap in >>>expertise, it seems OK to ask). >> >>FWIW, it _has_ been a while since I used that one... >> >>It seems that talk works between machines these days. Though looking at >>the source code, there's less a 'protocol' than a TCP stream between two >>endpoints. >> >>I.e., it's nowhere as complex as telnet, which is spec'd as an RFC. >> >>Joe >> > > From day at std.com Thu Dec 19 13:58:00 2002 From: day at std.com (John Day) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 16:58:00 -0500 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.2.20021219162308.04e21008@mail.reed.com.> References: <3E021CFB.7040506@isi.edu> <5.1.0.14.2.20021219105526.01d7e500@mail.meer.net> <3E021AEC.2040106@isi.edu> <5.1.1.6.2.20021219162308.04e21008@mail.reed.com.> Message-ID: I concur with David. Virtually every timesharing system I came across had this. The Tenex facility was a bit different in that it actually linked the two terminals, so that anything either typed was visible to the other. (EVEN if they typed at the same time. It would interleave it on a character by character basis!! You can imagine how that looked!) Jim's original teleconferencing program really was just an interface to allow more than 2. Later he started adding bells and whistles that allowed someone to grab the floor and later yet allowed someone to moderate the floor. I remember actually working on the design with him using his program to discuss it. First while he was at Case-Western and later when he was at BBN, and late night discussions with John Iseli and Jake Feinler and I don't remember who all else. Take care, John >Englebart's NLS is one of the most important pieces of prior art >here. It was working well in 1967. Licklider described his use >of the original NLS in Scientific American in 1967. > >DTSS had something like this before 1970. We had stuff like this >at MIT on nearly every timesharing system (including CTSS on the >7094, Multics, ITS). I think I helped build such a talk program on >Multics as part of the SIPB system that I worked on under Bob >Frankston's direction in 19769-1970. I helped write several others >inter-user communications programs on Multics. I'm pretty sure I >used it on CTSS in 1968. I think terminal-to-terminal talk was >available on CP/CMS as well. > >I've asked Bob Frankston to corroborate. Bob probably can't post to >ih, but I'll repost what he says about early terminal-to-terminal >talk programs. > >All of these systems had "who" commands or otherwise let you list >the users online as well. Some let you check who was on other >machines, and some let you talk live across machine boundaries. > > >At 11:26 AM 12/19/2002 -0800, Brian Dear wrote: >>I've placed PLATO's TERM-talk terminal-to-terminal talking >>capability to 29 years ago today (see >>www.platopeople.com/termtalk.html) but I'm curious if there were >>other inter-terminal talking facilities up and running prior to >>that. Most likely candidate I figured was Unix's "talk" command. >> >>- Brian >> >> >>At 11:24 AM 12/19/02 -0800, Joe Touch wrote: >>>Joe Touch wrote: >>>>Brian Dear wrote: >>>> >>>>>Hi, >>>>> >>>>>Does anyone know the date that the Unix "talk" command >>>>>originally appeared, and on what version/platform of Unix, and >>>>>also if there's an RFC on it (I've not been able to locate one)? >>>> >>>>I would not expect an RFC: talk is between users on a single >>>>machine. RFCs tend to require inter-machine communication ;-) >>>>I.e., this may be Unix history, but not quite Internet history >>>>(though given we don't get that much traffic, and there's some >>>>overlap in expertise, it seems OK to ask). >>> >>>FWIW, it _has_ been a while since I used that one... >>> >>>It seems that talk works between machines these days. Though >>>looking at the source code, there's less a 'protocol' than a TCP >>>stream between two endpoints. >>> >>>I.e., it's nowhere as complex as telnet, which is spec'd as an RFC. >>> >>>Joe From mills at udel.edu Thu Dec 19 14:29:10 2002 From: mills at udel.edu (David L. Mills) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 22:29:10 +0000 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command References: <5.1.0.14.2.20021219105526.01d7e500@mail.meer.net> Message-ID: <3E024836.7E0B8089@udel.edu> Brian, Olde Fuzzball had equivalent of talk on port 63 for the SATNET coming out party/demonstration at NCC 79. Fuzzball is not Unix, of course, so this bit of trivial history might not be useful to you. Brian Dear wrote: > > Hi, > > Does anyone know the date that the Unix "talk" command originally appeared, > and on what version/platform of Unix, and also if there's an RFC on it > (I've not been able to locate one)? > > - Brian From mills at udel.edu Thu Dec 19 14:34:07 2002 From: mills at udel.edu (David L. Mills) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 22:34:07 +0000 Subject: [ih] Re: This history of "talk" References: <200212192051.UAA18637@gra.isi.edu> Message-ID: <3E02495F.9A12D39B@udel.edu> Bob, Add Dartmouth BASIC to your list. That on a GE 635 circa 1962(?) via real Teletype 33ASR and Western Union TELEX(!). Of course, this system and maybe some others you cite was a centralized timesharing system and not designed to operate in a network with users on other machines. Dave Bob Braden wrote: > > I believe that the "talk" program was one instantiation of the > notion of "linking" users. Well, the original term was "linking > teletypes". I suspect that every designer of an early timesharing > system (re-?)invented this concept. Once you have a mechanism to > pass typed characters to and from a user's teletype, it is obvious > that you can use this as an inter-user communication mechanism, > "linking" two user's erminals. > > This is a long time ago and I am a bit fuzzy, but I think I first saw > the linkiong concept on John McCarthy's PDP/1 (?) time sharing system > when I went to work at Stanford in 1966. It was certainly present in > Englebart's NLS system in the mid 1970s, and I believe it existed in > the ITS and Multics system, probably in the mid 1960s. > > As soon as you had teletype connectivity across the ARPAnet, it > was obvious that you could just as easily link across the network. > I believe this was a feature of Tenex, probably of TOPS 10 and > TOPS 20. And I even implemented it on an IBM mainframe... ;-) > > Bob Braden From steve at stevecrocker.com Wed Dec 18 15:19:06 2002 From: steve at stevecrocker.com (Steve Crocker) Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 18:19:06 -0500 Subject: [ih] RE: ARPANET Telnet design story In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <003201c2a6eb$dce36290$ada8a8c0@SCROCKER> Adriana, I put the article into Word and scribbled some comments. If you have trouble with Word, let me know and I'll transform the marked up document into something else. Several other folks on this list were primary participants and can comment authoritatively. My comments reflect my best recollection, but it won't surprise me if recollections differ. Steve > -----Original Message----- > From: Adriana C. Arrington [mailto:aca at cs.utexas.edu] > Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2002 11:14 AM > To: internet-history at postel.org; amckenzie3 at yahoo.com; > steve at stevecrocker.com; vinton.g.cerf at wcom.com; > jeff at rulifson.org; dave at walden-family.com > Cc: Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan > Subject: ARPANET Telnet design story > > > Hello, > > I am continuing the research for the technical history of > Telnet with Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan for the THINK Protocols project. > > The goal of THIS email is to solicit some stories, opinions, > regrets, deadends, etc. on the design (or early usage) of the > Telnet protocol, that would add the personal touch to the > story, help engage the novice reader in the subject, and > perhaps better explain some decisions made in the development > of the protocol. The time frame for the story is mainly > between 1968 and 1973, but any experiences after 1973 are > also welcome. > > I have included the outline of the story as a reference, and > in case you are interested, the URL to the current version of > the story: > http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/chris/think/Project_Management/ > F2002/aca/CurrentTelnet.html > > Thanks, > Adriana Arrington > > -------------------------------------------------------------- > --------- > The Design of the Telnet Protocol for the ARPANET > Outline > December 5, 2002 > > -Introduction > > -The State of Networking and the Struggle to Organize (ARPANET > introduction) > > -Ad-hoc Telnet: The First Attempts at Demonstrating Remote > Login on the ARPANET (Late 1969) > > -The Old Telnet Protocol (1971 - 1973) > =Why Telnet Became a Protocol > =First Issues in the Effort to Standardize (Early 1971) > +The Need for a Consistent Character Set > +To Echo or Not to Echo > +The Trouble with Interrupt Handling on the Server Side > +Making the Telnet Connection > =The Necessity of the Network Virtual Terminal and the N^2 Problem > =The Experience with Old Telnet (1973) > +Asymmetrical Control Structure > +Little Room for Expanding the Number of Control > Functions and Options > +The Problem with the Character-at-a-Time and Line-at-a-Time Hosts > > (what follows has yet to be written) > -The New Telnet Protocol (1973 - 1980) > =The More Symmetrical Telnet: WILL, WONT, DO, DONT > =Negotiated Options - A Key Concept > =Solving the Echoing Problem > =Expanding the Set of Control Functions with IAC > =Help for Half-Duplex Systems: The Go-Ahead Control Function > =Comments and Experiences with the New Implementation > > -Conclusion > =Summary > =Relationship between the ARPANET Telnet and Today's Telnet > > > > > > > > > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Telnet history.doc Type: application/msword Size: 80896 bytes Desc: not available URL: From vinton.g.cerf at wcom.com Wed Dec 18 20:49:42 2002 From: vinton.g.cerf at wcom.com (vinton g. cerf) Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 23:49:42 -0500 Subject: [ih] Fwd: RE: ARPANET Telnet design story Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.2.20021218234852.02501e88@pop.wcomnet.com> see cerf comments in attached .doc file vint >Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 18:19:06 -0500 >From: Steve Crocker >Subject: RE: ARPANET Telnet design story >To: "'Adriana C. Arrington'" , internet-history at postel.org, > amckenzie3 at yahoo.com, vinton.g.cerf at wcom.com, jeff at rulifson.org, > dave at walden-family.com >Cc: 'Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan' >X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.2627 >Importance: Normal > >Adriana, > >I put the article into Word and scribbled some comments. If you have >trouble with Word, let me know and I'll transform the marked up document >into something else. > >Several other folks on this list were primary participants and can >comment authoritatively. My comments reflect my best recollection, but >it won't surprise me if recollections differ. > >Steve > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Adriana C. Arrington [mailto:aca at cs.utexas.edu] >> Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2002 11:14 AM >> To: internet-history at postel.org; amckenzie3 at yahoo.com; >> steve at stevecrocker.com; vinton.g.cerf at wcom.com; >> jeff at rulifson.org; dave at walden-family.com >> Cc: Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan >> Subject: ARPANET Telnet design story >> >> >> Hello, >> >> I am continuing the research for the technical history of >> Telnet with Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan for the THINK Protocols project. >> >> The goal of THIS email is to solicit some stories, opinions, >> regrets, deadends, etc. on the design (or early usage) of the >> Telnet protocol, that would add the personal touch to the >> story, help engage the novice reader in the subject, and >> perhaps better explain some decisions made in the development >> of the protocol. The time frame for the story is mainly >> between 1968 and 1973, but any experiences after 1973 are >> also welcome. >> >> I have included the outline of the story as a reference, and >> in case you are interested, the URL to the current version of >> the story: >> http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/chris/think/Project_Management/ >> F2002/aca/CurrentTelnet.html >> >> Thanks, >> Adriana Arrington >> >> -------------------------------------------------------------- >> --------- >> The Design of the Telnet Protocol for the ARPANET >> Outline >> December 5, 2002 >> >> -Introduction >> >> -The State of Networking and the Struggle to Organize (ARPANET >> introduction) >> >> -Ad-hoc Telnet: The First Attempts at Demonstrating Remote >> Login on the ARPANET (Late 1969) >> >> -The Old Telnet Protocol (1971 - 1973) >> =Why Telnet Became a Protocol >> =First Issues in the Effort to Standardize (Early 1971) >> +The Need for a Consistent Character Set >> +To Echo or Not to Echo >> +The Trouble with Interrupt Handling on the Server Side >> +Making the Telnet Connection >> =The Necessity of the Network Virtual Terminal and the N^2 Problem >> =The Experience with Old Telnet (1973) >> +Asymmetrical Control Structure >> +Little Room for Expanding the Number of Control >> Functions and Options >> +The Problem with the Character-at-a-Time and Line-at-a-Time Hosts >> >> (what follows has yet to be written) >> -The New Telnet Protocol (1973 - 1980) >> =The More Symmetrical Telnet: WILL, WONT, DO, DONT >> =Negotiated Options - A Key Concept >> =Solving the Echoing Problem >> =Expanding the Set of Control Functions with IAC >> =Help for Half-Duplex Systems: The Go-Ahead Control Function >> =Comments and Experiences with the New Implementation >> >> -Conclusion >> =Summary >> =Relationship between the ARPANET Telnet and Today's Telnet >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Vint Cerf SVP Architecture & Technology WorldCom 22001 Loudoun County Parkway, F2-4115 Ashburn, VA 20147 703 886 1690 (v806 1690) 703 886 0047 fax -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Telnet history.doc Type: application/msword Size: 68096 bytes Desc: not available URL: From Saltzer at MIT.EDU Thu Dec 19 15:36:18 2002 From: Saltzer at MIT.EDU (Jerome H Saltzer) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 18:36:18 -0500 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command In-Reply-To: <200212192154.QAA09560@pacific-carrier-annex.mit.edu> References: <200212192154.QAA09560@pacific-carrier-annex.mit.edu> Message-ID: At 4:54 PM -0500 12/19/02, Bob Frankston wrote: >I'd be surprised if there weren't a similar facility on CTSS (Jerry?) There was. See the excerpt below, from the 1965 CTSS Programmer's Guide. The programmer's guide doesn't document any user-level commands that use these supervisor call, but I recall using such commands. It would require some research to find out just when this feature first appeared in CTSS, but from the lack of user-level commands in the programmer's guide, I would guess that the supervisor entries were added to the system just before the manual went to press, and the user-level commands appeared sometime after that. Jerry ----------------------------------------------------------- CTSS PROGRAMMER'S GUIDE Section AG.1.04 _Identification_ Inter-user communication WRMESS, RDMESS, ALLOW, FORBID _Purpose_ To provide the facility for users to communicate with each other directly, several routines have been added to the supervisor which allow the sending and receiving of messages by way of the console input buffers. Privacy screens have been provided which "allow" or "forbid" the sending of messages by specified users. _Usage_ To send a message: TSX WRMESS,4 PZE =HPROBN PZE =HPROGN PZE LOC,,'N' PROBN is the problem number of the receiver PROGN is the programmer number of the receiver LOC is the beginning location of the message n is the number of words in the message ... ----------------------------------------------------------------- From dave at walden-family.com Thu Dec 19 09:30:06 2002 From: dave at walden-family.com (David C. Walden) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 11:30:06 -0600 Subject: [ih] Re: ARPANET Telnet design story In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.2.20021219111532.03050ad0@pop3.norton.antivirus> Hi, I am back home now, and can respond to your message. I don't think I see the following paper on your list of sources: "The ARPANET TELNET Protocol: Its Purpose, Principles, Implementation, and Impact on Host Operating System Design," by J. Davidson, W. Hathaway, N. Mimno, J. Postel, R. Thomas, and D. Walden), Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE Fifth Data Communications Symposium, September 1977, pp. 4-10 to 4-18; reprinted in A Practical View of Computer Communication Protocols, John M. McQuillan and Vinton G. Cerf, IEEE, 1978, pp. 244-253; also reprinted in Innovations in Internetworking, Craig Partridge (ed.), Artech House Inc., 1988, pp. 322-330. This was a fairly comprehensive statement about Telnet as of the time the paper was published. (I initiated writing this paper, and Bob Thomas and I primarily wrote it with the inputs and repeated reviews of the other authors.) If you don't have a copy, I can make a copy and send it to you. I will also pull together and send you a separate message describing in his own words (from prior email messages I have from him) how Bernie Cosell came up with negotiated options on a cocktail napkin during a plane trip he and I were making to UCLA to meet with others in the ARPANET community, how he did a blackboard and hand-waving explanation at the UCLA meeting, how I promised meeting attendees that we would document the idea, and how he and I documented the idea and provided it as input to the then-happening revision of the Telnet spec. Best regards, Dave At 10:13 AM 12/11/2002, Adriana C. Arrington wrote: >Hello, > >I am continuing the research for the technical history of Telnet with >Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan for the THINK Protocols project. > >The goal of THIS email is to solicit some stories, opinions, regrets, >deadends, etc. on the design (or early usage) of the Telnet protocol, that >would add the personal touch to the story, help engage the novice reader >in the subject, and perhaps better explain some decisions made in the >development of the protocol. The time frame for the story is >mainly between 1968 and 1973, but any experiences after 1973 are also >welcome. > >I have included the outline of the story as a reference, and in case you >are interested, the URL to the current version of the story: >http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/chris/think/Project_Management/F2002/aca/CurrentTelnet.html > >Thanks, >Adriana Arrington > >----------------------------------------------------------------------- >The Design of the Telnet Protocol for the ARPANET >Outline >December 5, 2002 > >-Introduction > >-The State of Networking and the Struggle to Organize (ARPANET > introduction) > >-Ad-hoc Telnet: The First Attempts at Demonstrating Remote > Login on the ARPANET (Late 1969) > >-The Old Telnet Protocol (1971 - 1973) > =Why Telnet Became a Protocol > =First Issues in the Effort to Standardize (Early 1971) > +The Need for a Consistent Character Set > +To Echo or Not to Echo > +The Trouble with Interrupt Handling on the Server Side > +Making the Telnet Connection > =The Necessity of the Network Virtual Terminal and the N^2 Problem > =The Experience with Old Telnet (1973) > +Asymmetrical Control Structure > +Little Room for Expanding the Number of Control Functions and Options > +The Problem with the Character-at-a-Time and Line-at-a-Time Hosts > >(what follows has yet to be written) >-The New Telnet Protocol (1973 - 1980) > =The More Symmetrical Telnet: WILL, WONT, DO, DONT > =Negotiated Options - A Key Concept > =Solving the Echoing Problem > =Expanding the Set of Control Functions with IAC > =Help for Half-Duplex Systems: The Go-Ahead Control Function > =Comments and Experiences with the New Implementation > >-Conclusion > =Summary > =Relationship between the ARPANET Telnet and Today's Telnet -- home address: 12 Linden Rd., E. Sandwich, MA 02537; ph/fax=508-888-7655/4168 web site = http://www.walden-family.com/dave From BobFrankston+xix at Bobf.Frankston.com Thu Dec 19 13:54:24 2002 From: BobFrankston+xix at Bobf.Frankston.com (Bob Frankston) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 16:54:24 -0500 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.2.20021219162308.04e21008@mail.reed.com.> Message-ID: <200212192154.gBJLsVC11028@boreas.isi.edu> I presume my main post will bounce but David can forward it. I've cc'ed Butler Lampson for expertise on the SDS-940 (the Project Genie SDS-930 for him). It did have a way to send messages between teletypes. I remember when we made this available at White-Weld in the 60's (67?) the SEC raised a concern about brokers using it. I'd be surprised if there weren't a similar facility on CTSS (Jerry?) On Multics I was at my office at Interactive Data (the White Weld group had merged with a Lincoln Lab group to form IDC) at about 3AM probably working on printing out my BS thesis (to guess the year -- that would be 1970 or 73/74 if was my MS) and wanted to reach people at Project MAC (now LCS) so I quickly cobbled together a program using message segments (an inner-ring-defined file queue). It had the SM command for positing the message and a part that could wait for the message in the background in a users process by taking advantage of the same facility used for saying "New Mail". The actual facility was in the user space and just an app -- nothing special in the system. But it was based on my experience with the 940. ITS (Incompatible Timesharing System) on the PDP-10 had a way to link console in various ways so that would also provide a talk facility. I would credit the 940 as having been a key source of the concepts since it was developed in 1964 and onward and flexible teletype handling was an essential element. Dartmouth and CTSS were more conservative with line-at-time approaches. That allowed messaging but the 940/ITS approach allowed for more flexible control over the interactive character streams. CP/CMS (now VM) did have console messaging though through the hypervisor (VM) so the user process didn't get a chance to intervene. It wrote directly to the console. Extending such capabilities over the network wasn't much of a stretch but I don't know when it might've been done. Tymshare did build a network based on SDS-940 protocols (we also did one at White Weld). It eventually became X.PC but I don't know if they did messaging over it. A lot of rambling -- the short answer is that console messaging has been around for a long time -- after all, that's what teletypes did. Bob Frankston http://www.Frankston.com -----Original Message----- From: David P. Reed [mailto:dpreed at reed.com] Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2002 16:36 To: Brian Dear; Joe Touch Cc: internet-history at postel.org; bobf at frankston.com Englebart's NLS is one of the most important pieces of prior art here. It was working well in 1967. Licklider described his use of the original NLS in Scientific American in 1967. DTSS had something like this before 1970. We had stuff like this at MIT on nearly every timesharing system (including CTSS on the 7094, Multics, ITS). I think I helped build such a talk program on Multics as part of the SIPB system that I worked on under Bob Frankston's direction in 19769-1970. I helped write several others inter-user communications programs on Multics. I'm pretty sure I used it on CTSS in 1968. I think terminal-to-terminal talk was available on CP/CMS as well. I've asked Bob Frankston to corroborate. Bob probably can't post to ih, but I'll repost what he says about early terminal-to-terminal talk programs. All of these systems had "who" commands or otherwise let you list the users online as well. Some let you check who was on other machines, and some let you talk live across machine boundaries. At 11:26 AM 12/19/2002 -0800, Brian Dear wrote: >I've placed PLATO's TERM-talk terminal-to-terminal talking capability to >29 years ago today (see www.platopeople.com/termtalk.html) but I'm curious >if there were other inter-terminal talking facilities up and running prior >to that. Most likely candidate I figured was Unix's "talk" command. > >- Brian > > >At 11:24 AM 12/19/02 -0800, Joe Touch wrote: >>Joe Touch wrote: >>>Brian Dear wrote: >>> >>>>Hi, >>>> >>>>Does anyone know the date that the Unix "talk" command originally >>>>appeared, and on what version/platform of Unix, and also if there's an >>>>RFC on it (I've not been able to locate one)? >>> >>>I would not expect an RFC: talk is between users on a single machine. >>>RFCs tend to require inter-machine communication ;-) >>>I.e., this may be Unix history, but not quite Internet history (though >>>given we don't get that much traffic, and there's some overlap in >>>expertise, it seems OK to ask). >> >>FWIW, it _has_ been a while since I used that one... >> >>It seems that talk works between machines these days. Though looking at >>the source code, there's less a 'protocol' than a TCP stream between two >>endpoints. >> >>I.e., it's nowhere as complex as telnet, which is spec'd as an RFC. >> >>Joe >> > > From touch at ISI.EDU Thu Dec 19 15:45:55 2002 From: touch at ISI.EDU (Joe Touch) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 15:45:55 -0800 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command References: <200212192154.gBJLsVb05960@tnt.isi.edu> Message-ID: <3E025A33.3000909@isi.edu> Bob Frankston wrote: > I presume my main post will bounce but David can forward it. FYI - some posts have been held for approval due to a long list of CC's, which should be fixed now (it's still got a limit, but it's a little larger). Joe From lyndon at orthanc.ab.ca Thu Dec 19 16:01:00 2002 From: lyndon at orthanc.ab.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 17:01:00 -0700 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command In-Reply-To: Message from Craig Partridge of "Thu, 19 Dec 2002 15:47:52 EST." <200212192047.gBJKlq7f038712@aland.bbn.com> Message-ID: <200212200001.gBK010B7035002@orthanc.ab.ca> >I can't recall if it was talk, or the networked version of write, that had >the incredible misfeature that if you said "[talk/write] all" it attempted >to contact all hosts in /etc/hosts -- that caused provoked an interesting >reaction from DARPA when someone accidentally did it with a full host >table, c. 1988. I recall this as being an invocation of rwall with a widely scoped IP broadcast address as the "host" (something like 'rwall 10.255.255.255' -- or were we still using zero's-broadcast at that time?). --lyndon From rogers at ISI.EDU Thu Dec 19 17:14:46 2002 From: rogers at ISI.EDU (Craig Milo Rogers) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 17:14:46 -0800 Subject: [ih] Re: This history of "talk" In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 19 Dec 2002 15:53:40 PST." <9986152060.20021219155340@brandenburg.com> Message-ID: <28608.1040346886@ISI.EDU> >I have a vague recollection that the SMTP Send command, that Perry cites, >was derived from an existing function, but do not remember the details. SMTP, in general, is descended from FTP. Craig Milo Rogers From faber at ISI.EDU Thu Dec 19 17:15:54 2002 From: faber at ISI.EDU (Ted Faber) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 17:15:54 -0800 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command In-Reply-To: References: <200212192154.QAA09560@pacific-carrier-annex.mit.edu> Message-ID: <20021220011554.GJ18018@pun.isi.edu> On Thu, Dec 19, 2002 at 06:36:18PM -0500, Jerome H Saltzer wrote: > At 4:54 PM -0500 12/19/02, Bob Frankston wrote: > >I'd be surprised if there weren't a similar facility on CTSS (Jerry?) > > There was. See the excerpt below, from the 1965 CTSS Programmer's Guide. As I reluctantly become less of a new kid on the block with respect to networking, reflecting on the fact that "talk" is older than I am brings a pleasant feeling of youth. :-) -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 187 bytes Desc: not available URL: From day at std.com Thu Dec 19 18:22:23 2002 From: day at std.com (John Day) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 21:22:23 -0500 Subject: [ih] Fwd: RE: ARPANET Telnet design story In-Reply-To: <14689159314.20021219164347@brandenburg.com> References: <5.1.1.6.2.20021218234852.02501e88@pop.wcomnet.com> <14689159314.20021219164347@brandenburg.com> Message-ID: At 16:43 -0800 12/19/02, Dave Crocker wrote: >vinton, > >Wednesday, December 18, 2002, 8:49:42 PM, you wrote: >vinton> see cerf comments in attached .doc file > >vinton> Actually, Englebart's system had a mouse, which we were well >vinton> acquainted with. They obviously weren't ubiquitous, and there >vinton> weren't any instances in the initial network of trying to use a >vinton> mouse to control a remote system, but the concept was certainly >vinton> visible to us from the very beginning. > >I think that SRI had the Imlac-based remote DNLS station -- and, therefore, >with a mouse -- working around early 74. I remember getting the UCLA Imlac >to run with it. Actually it was probably well before 74, RFC100 notes that SRI was porting NLS to an IMLAC. I know we had one and had the code up and running but can't remember exactly what year it was. But it certainly didn't take them 4 years to port it! ;-) Take care, John From steve at stevecrocker.com Thu Dec 19 19:59:59 2002 From: steve at stevecrocker.com (Steve Crocker) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 22:59:59 -0500 Subject: [ih] RE: RE: ARPANET Telnet design story In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.2.20021218234852.02501e88@pop.wcomnet.com> Message-ID: <000a01c2a7dc$4424c7a0$0cffa8c0@SCROCKER> I've added a comment in the document re the requirement to generate all characters. This was not included in the first round of Telnet thinking and its inclusion had some important implications. See my comment in the text. Steve > -----Original Message----- > From: vinton g. cerf [mailto:vinton.g.cerf at wcom.com] > Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2002 11:50 PM > To: Steve Crocker; 'Adriana C. Arrington'; > internet-history at postel.org; amckenzie3 at yahoo.com; > jeff at rulifson.org; dave at walden-family.com; 'Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan' > Subject: Fwd: RE: ARPANET Telnet design story > > > see cerf comments in attached .doc file > > vint > > > >Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 18:19:06 -0500 > >From: Steve Crocker > >Subject: RE: ARPANET Telnet design story > >To: "'Adriana C. Arrington'" , > >internet-history at postel.org, amckenzie3 at yahoo.com, > >vinton.g.cerf at wcom.com, jeff at rulifson.org, dave at walden-family.com > >Cc: 'Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan' > >X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.2627 > >Importance: Normal > > > >Adriana, > > > >I put the article into Word and scribbled some comments. If > you have > >trouble with Word, let me know and I'll transform the marked up > >document into something else. > > > >Several other folks on this list were primary participants and can > >comment authoritatively. My comments reflect my best > recollection, but > >it won't surprise me if recollections differ. > > > >Steve > > > >> -----Original Message----- > >> From: Adriana C. Arrington [mailto:aca at cs.utexas.edu] > >> Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2002 11:14 AM > >> To: internet-history at postel.org; amckenzie3 at yahoo.com; > >> steve at stevecrocker.com; vinton.g.cerf at wcom.com; > >> jeff at rulifson.org; dave at walden-family.com > >> Cc: Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan > >> Subject: ARPANET Telnet design story > >> > >> > >> Hello, > >> > >> I am continuing the research for the technical history of > >> Telnet with Chris Edmondson-Yurkanan for the THINK > Protocols project. > >> > >> The goal of THIS email is to solicit some stories, opinions, > >> regrets, deadends, etc. on the design (or early usage) of the > >> Telnet protocol, that would add the personal touch to the > >> story, help engage the novice reader in the subject, and > >> perhaps better explain some decisions made in the development > >> of the protocol. The time frame for the story is mainly > >> between 1968 and 1973, but any experiences after 1973 are > >> also welcome. > >> > >> I have included the outline of the story as a reference, and > >> in case you are interested, the URL to the current version of > >> the story: > >> http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/chris/think/Project_Management/ > >> F2002/aca/CurrentTelnet.html > >> > >> Thanks, > >> Adriana Arrington > >> > >> -------------------------------------------------------------- > >> --------- > >> The Design of the Telnet Protocol for the ARPANET > >> Outline > >> December 5, 2002 > >> > >> -Introduction > >> > >> -The State of Networking and the Struggle to Organize (ARPANET > >> introduction) > >> > >> -Ad-hoc Telnet: The First Attempts at Demonstrating Remote > >> Login on the ARPANET (Late 1969) > >> > >> -The Old Telnet Protocol (1971 - 1973) > >> =Why Telnet Became a Protocol > >> =First Issues in the Effort to Standardize (Early 1971) > >> +The Need for a Consistent Character Set > >> +To Echo or Not to Echo > >> +The Trouble with Interrupt Handling on the Server Side > >> +Making the Telnet Connection > >> =The Necessity of the Network Virtual Terminal and the > N^2 Problem > >> =The Experience with Old Telnet (1973) > >> +Asymmetrical Control Structure > >> +Little Room for Expanding the Number of Control > >> Functions and Options > >> +The Problem with the Character-at-a-Time and > Line-at-a-Time Hosts > >> > >> (what follows has yet to be written) > >> -The New Telnet Protocol (1973 - 1980) > >> =The More Symmetrical Telnet: WILL, WONT, DO, DONT > >> =Negotiated Options - A Key Concept > >> =Solving the Echoing Problem > >> =Expanding the Set of Control Functions with IAC > >> =Help for Half-Duplex Systems: The Go-Ahead Control Function > >> =Comments and Experiences with the New Implementation > >> > >> -Conclusion > >> =Summary > >> =Relationship between the ARPANET Telnet and Today's Telnet > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> > > Vint Cerf > SVP Architecture & Technology > WorldCom > 22001 Loudoun County Parkway, F2-4115 > Ashburn, VA 20147 > 703 886 1690 (v806 1690) > 703 886 0047 fax > -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Telnet history.doc Type: application/msword Size: 83456 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Thu Dec 19 22:18:05 2002 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 22:18:05 -0800 Subject: [ih] Re: This history of "talk" In-Reply-To: <28608.1040346886@ISI.EDU> References: <28608.1040346886@ISI.EDU> Message-ID: <4109217336.20021219221805@brandenburg.com> Craig, Thursday, December 19, 2002, 5:14:46 PM, you wrote: >>I have a vague recollection that the SMTP Send command, that Perry cites, >>was derived from an existing function, but do not remember the details. Craig> SMTP, in general, is descended from FTP. I misttyped. SMTP didn't come around until much later, and it was the FTP commands ("Send to Terminal" and "Sent to Terminal or else Mail") that I meant to cite. d/ -- Dave Brandenburg InternetWorking t +1.408.246.8253; f +1.408.850.1850 From vinton.g.cerf at wcom.com Fri Dec 20 01:03:48 2002 From: vinton.g.cerf at wcom.com (vinton g. cerf) Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 04:03:48 -0500 Subject: [ih] Fwd: RE: ARPANET Telnet design story In-Reply-To: References: <14689159314.20021219164347@brandenburg.com> <5.1.1.6.2.20021218234852.02501e88@pop.wcomnet.com> <14689159314.20021219164347@brandenburg.com> Message-ID: <5.1.1.6.2.20021220040239.023c0938@pop.wcomnet.com> we had an IMLAC at UCLA at one point and there was a special terminal that SRI designed for use of NLS on the ARPANET (via TIP?) however I am not sure any of this is especially germane to Telnet. Does anyone remember whether the SRI NLS terminal used Telnet or a special protocol of its own? vint At 09:22 PM 12/19/2002 -0500, John Day wrote: >At 16:43 -0800 12/19/02, Dave Crocker wrote: >>vinton, >> >>Wednesday, December 18, 2002, 8:49:42 PM, you wrote: >>vinton> see cerf comments in attached .doc file >> >>vinton> Actually, Englebart's system had a mouse, which we were well >>vinton> acquainted with. They obviously weren't ubiquitous, and there >>vinton> weren't any instances in the initial network of trying to use a >>vinton> mouse to control a remote system, but the concept was certainly >>vinton> visible to us from the very beginning. >> >>I think that SRI had the Imlac-based remote DNLS station -- and, therefore, >>with a mouse -- working around early 74. I remember getting the UCLA Imlac >>to run with it. > >Actually it was probably well before 74, RFC100 notes that SRI was porting NLS to an IMLAC. I know we had one and had the code up and running but can't remember exactly what year it was. But it certainly didn't take them 4 years to port it! ;-) > >Take care, >John Vint Cerf SVP Architecture & Technology WorldCom 22001 Loudoun County Parkway, F2-4115 Ashburn, VA 20147 703 886 1690 (v806 1690) 703 886 0047 fax From day at std.com Fri Dec 20 05:21:28 2002 From: day at std.com (John Day) Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 08:21:28 -0500 Subject: [ih] Re: This history of "talk" In-Reply-To: <4109217336.20021219221805@brandenburg.com> References: <28608.1040346886@ISI.EDU> <4109217336.20021219221805@brandenburg.com> Message-ID: At 22:18 -0800 12/19/02, Dave Crocker wrote: >Craig, > >Thursday, December 19, 2002, 5:14:46 PM, you wrote: > >>I have a vague recollection that the SMTP Send command, that Perry cites, > >>was derived from an existing function, but do not remember the details. >Craig> SMTP, in general, is descended from FTP. > >I misttyped. SMTP didn't come around until much later, and it was the FTP >commands ("Send to Terminal" and "Sent to Terminal or else Mail") that I >meant to cite. There were two mail commands in FTP. MAIL sent the mail on the Telnet connection and MLFL sent it on the FTP data transfer connection. John From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Fri Dec 20 07:41:53 2002 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 07:41:53 -0800 Subject: [ih] Re: This history of "talk" In-Reply-To: References: <28608.1040346886@ISI.EDU> <4109217336.20021219221805@brandenburg.com> Message-ID: <29143045588.20021220074153@brandenburg.com> John, Friday, December 20, 2002, 5:21:28 AM, you wrote: >>it was the FTP >>commands ("Send to Terminal" and "Sent to Terminal or else Mail") that I >>meant to cite. John> There were two mail commands in FTP. MAIL sent the mail on the RFC# 737, K. Harrenstien,31 October 1977, "FTP Extension: XSEN": XSEN -- Send to terminal. XSEM -- Send, Mail if can't. XMAS -- Mail And Send. (couldn't resist this one) d/ -- Dave Brandenburg InternetWorking t +1.408.246.8253; f +1.408.850.1850 From braden at ISI.EDU Fri Dec 20 11:29:55 2002 From: braden at ISI.EDU (Bob Braden) Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 19:29:55 GMT Subject: [ih] The end of the Great Switch? Message-ID: <200212201929.TAA18959@gra.isi.edu> I have been asked when conversion to TCP/IP was actually completed. I don't really recall, but I expect it was an exponential process; the last few took a long time to convert, or simply disconnected. However, I think that at some point BBN turned off link 0 (?), the NCP control link, on the IMPs, so NCP could no longer run in the ARPAnet. Does anyone recall when this happened? Thanks, Bob Braden From brian at platopeople.com Sat Dec 21 06:20:43 2002 From: brian at platopeople.com (Brian Dear) Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 06:20:43 -0800 Subject: [ih] Seeking info on Thomas O'Sullivan fmrly of ARPA/NWG Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20021221061736.00a2f450@mail.meer.net> In the late 60s and early 70s one of the members of the Network Working Group and a regular contributor to RFCs was one Thomas O'Sullivan, who worked at Raytheon. Does anyone know whatever happened to him? I've not been able to locate him. Is he still alive? Any info would be appreciated, thanks. - Brian From blampson at microsoft.com Mon Dec 23 09:10:23 2002 From: blampson at microsoft.com (Butler Lampson) Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 09:10:23 -0800 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command Message-ID: <8BD7226E07DDFF49AF5EF4030ACE0B7E0896E39F@red-msg-06.redmond.corp.microsoft.com> The 940 system definitely had such a mechanism. It was there pretty much from the start, and was demonstrated at the 1966 FJCC. I don't remember, however, what inspired it. Perhaps it was the CTSS facility, which was certainly earlier. As I recall, the 940 system was quite different from CTSS's; it worked by linking the output channel of two (or more?) ttys so that anything sent to one of them was output to both. Peter Deutsch might remember more about this. Perhaps he can be reached at ghost at aladdin.com; I've copied that address on this message. ________________________________ From: Bob Frankston [mailto:BobFrankston+xix at Bobf.Frankston.com] Sent: Thu 12/19/2002 4:54 PM To: 'David P. Reed'; 'Brian Dear'; 'Joe Touch' Cc: internet-history at postel.org; bobf at frankston.com; Ray Ozzie; Butler Lampson; Jerry Saltzer Subject: RE: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command I presume my main post will bounce but David can forward it. I've cc'ed Butler Lampson for expertise on the SDS-940 (the Project Genie SDS-930 for him). It did have a way to send messages between teletypes. I remember when we made this available at White-Weld in the 60's (67?) the SEC raised a concern about brokers using it. I'd be surprised if there weren't a similar facility on CTSS (Jerry?) On Multics I was at my office at Interactive Data (the White Weld group had merged with a Lincoln Lab group to form IDC) at about 3AM probably working on printing out my BS thesis (to guess the year -- that would be 1970 or 73/74 if was my MS) and wanted to reach people at Project MAC (now LCS) so I quickly cobbled together a program using message segments (an inner-ring-defined file queue). It had the SM command for positing the message and a part that could wait for the message in the background in a users process by taking advantage of the same facility used for saying "New Mail". The actual facility was in the user space and just an app -- nothing special in the system. But it was based on my experience with the 940. ITS (Incompatible Timesharing System) on the PDP-10 had a way to link console in various ways so that would also provide a talk facility. I would credit the 940 as having been a key source of the concepts since it was developed in 1964 and onward and flexible teletype handling was an essential element. Dartmouth and CTSS were more conservative with line-at-time approaches. That allowed messaging but the 940/ITS approach allowed for more flexible control over the interactive character streams. CP/CMS (now VM) did have console messaging though through the hypervisor (VM) so the user process didn't get a chance to intervene. It wrote directly to the console. Extending such capabilities over the network wasn't much of a stretch but I don't know when it might've been done. Tymshare did build a network based on SDS-940 protocols (we also did one at White Weld). It eventually became X.PC but I don't know if they did messaging over it. A lot of rambling -- the short answer is that console messaging has been around for a long time -- after all, that's what teletypes did. Bob Frankston http://www.Frankston.com -----Original Message----- From: David P. Reed [mailto:dpreed at reed.com] Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2002 16:36 To: Brian Dear; Joe Touch Cc: internet-history at postel.org; bobf at frankston.com Englebart's NLS is one of the most important pieces of prior art here. It was working well in 1967. Licklider described his use of the original NLS in Scientific American in 1967. DTSS had something like this before 1970. We had stuff like this at MIT on nearly every timesharing system (including CTSS on the 7094, Multics, ITS). I think I helped build such a talk program on Multics as part of the SIPB system that I worked on under Bob Frankston's direction in 19769-1970. I helped write several others inter-user communications programs on Multics. I'm pretty sure I used it on CTSS in 1968. I think terminal-to-terminal talk was available on CP/CMS as well. I've asked Bob Frankston to corroborate. Bob probably can't post to ih, but I'll repost what he says about early terminal-to-terminal talk programs. All of these systems had "who" commands or otherwise let you list the users online as well. Some let you check who was on other machines, and some let you talk live across machine boundaries. At 11:26 AM 12/19/2002 -0800, Brian Dear wrote: >I've placed PLATO's TERM-talk terminal-to-terminal talking capability to >29 years ago today (see www.platopeople.com/termtalk.html) but I'm curious >if there were other inter-terminal talking facilities up and running prior >to that. Most likely candidate I figured was Unix's "talk" command. > >- Brian > > >At 11:24 AM 12/19/02 -0800, Joe Touch wrote: >>Joe Touch wrote: >>>Brian Dear wrote: >>> >>>>Hi, >>>> >>>>Does anyone know the date that the Unix "talk" command originally >>>>appeared, and on what version/platform of Unix, and also if there's an >>>>RFC on it (I've not been able to locate one)? >>> >>>I would not expect an RFC: talk is between users on a single machine. >>>RFCs tend to require inter-machine communication ;-) >>>I.e., this may be Unix history, but not quite Internet history (though >>>given we don't get that much traffic, and there's some overlap in >>>expertise, it seems OK to ask). >> >>FWIW, it _has_ been a while since I used that one... >> >>It seems that talk works between machines these days. Though looking at >>the source code, there's less a 'protocol' than a TCP stream between two >>endpoints. >> >>I.e., it's nowhere as complex as telnet, which is spec'd as an RFC. >> >>Joe >> > > From BobFrankston+xix at Bobf.Frankston.com Mon Dec 23 10:15:46 2002 From: BobFrankston+xix at Bobf.Frankston.com (Bob Frankston) Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 13:15:46 -0500 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command In-Reply-To: <8BD7226E07DDFF49AF5EF4030ACE0B7E0896E39F@red-msg-06.redmond.corp.microsoft.com> Message-ID: <200212231815.gBNIFsC06475@boreas.isi.edu> Thanks. I don't know the details of CTSS but judging from Multics and CP/CMS, yes, it was very different. There seemed to be two approaches. The Dartmouth/CTSS "outsourced" TTY handling and the main system processed lines of text whereas the 940 and DEC systems (derived, I think from the 940 thinking) had no qualms about processing each character. Over time, of course, the approach converged. BTW, along these lines, I have a transcript of a presentation you gave at White-Weld back in June of 1966. It's a wonderful document - I've scanned it but haven't had a chance to edit it. If you have a student who wants to do so I think it would be very helpful both in showing how much people (well, a very few people) understood about system design back then and how relevant it still is. In particular, the 940's shallow approach with more of peer processing vs. the deep deep layering of objects of many of today's systems. The former is a much more resilient approach. But that's a bit off-topic for the IM discussion. I don't know the original source of the IM question but it may be related to AOL's attempt to enforce a patent on IM. Ignorance of the past seems to be a key success factor in the world of patents. Bob Frankston http://www.Frankston.com -----Original Message----- From: Butler Lampson [mailto:blampson at microsoft.com] Sent: Monday, December 23, 2002 12:10 To: Bob Frankston; David P. Reed; Brian Dear; Joe Touch; ghost at aladdin.com Cc: internet-history at postel.org; bobf at frankston.com; Ray Ozzie; Jerry Saltzer The 940 system definitely had such a mechanism. It was there pretty much from the start, and was demonstrated at the 1966 FJCC. I don't remember, however, what inspired it. Perhaps it was the CTSS facility, which was certainly earlier. As I recall, the 940 system was quite different from CTSS's; it worked by linking the output channel of two (or more?) ttys so that anything sent to one of them was output to both. Peter Deutsch might remember more about this. Perhaps he can be reached at ghost at aladdin.com; I've copied that address on this message. ________________________________ From: Bob Frankston [mailto:BobFrankston+xix at Bobf.Frankston.com] Sent: Thu 12/19/2002 4:54 PM To: 'David P. Reed'; 'Brian Dear'; 'Joe Touch' Cc: internet-history at postel.org; bobf at frankston.com; Ray Ozzie; Butler Lampson; Jerry Saltzer Subject: RE: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command I presume my main post will bounce but David can forward it. I've cc'ed Butler Lampson for expertise on the SDS-940 (the Project Genie SDS-930 for him). It did have a way to send messages between teletypes. I remember when we made this available at White-Weld in the 60's (67?) the SEC raised a concern about brokers using it. I'd be surprised if there weren't a similar facility on CTSS (Jerry?) On Multics I was at my office at Interactive Data (the White Weld group had merged with a Lincoln Lab group to form IDC) at about 3AM probably working on printing out my BS thesis (to guess the year -- that would be 1970 or 73/74 if was my MS) and wanted to reach people at Project MAC (now LCS) so I quickly cobbled together a program using message segments (an inner-ring-defined file queue). It had the SM command for positing the message and a part that could wait for the message in the background in a users process by taking advantage of the same facility used for saying "New Mail". The actual facility was in the user space and just an app -- nothing special in the system. But it was based on my experience with the 940. ITS (Incompatible Timesharing System) on the PDP-10 had a way to link console in various ways so that would also provide a talk facility. I would credit the 940 as having been a key source of the concepts since it was developed in 1964 and onward and flexible teletype handling was an essential element. Dartmouth and CTSS were more conservative with line-at-time approaches. That allowed messaging but the 940/ITS approach allowed for more flexible control over the interactive character streams. CP/CMS (now VM) did have console messaging though through the hypervisor (VM) so the user process didn't get a chance to intervene. It wrote directly to the console. Extending such capabilities over the network wasn't much of a stretch but I don't know when it might've been done. Tymshare did build a network based on SDS-940 protocols (we also did one at White Weld). It eventually became X.PC but I don't know if they did messaging over it. A lot of rambling -- the short answer is that console messaging has been around for a long time -- after all, that's what teletypes did. Bob Frankston http://www.Frankston.com -----Original Message----- From: David P. Reed [mailto:dpreed at reed.com] Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2002 16:36 To: Brian Dear; Joe Touch Cc: internet-history at postel.org; bobf at frankston.com Englebart's NLS is one of the most important pieces of prior art here. It was working well in 1967. Licklider described his use of the original NLS in Scientific American in 1967. DTSS had something like this before 1970. We had stuff like this at MIT on nearly every timesharing system (including CTSS on the 7094, Multics, ITS). I think I helped build such a talk program on Multics as part of the SIPB system that I worked on under Bob Frankston's direction in 19769-1970. I helped write several others inter-user communications programs on Multics. I'm pretty sure I used it on CTSS in 1968. I think terminal-to-terminal talk was available on CP/CMS as well. I've asked Bob Frankston to corroborate. Bob probably can't post to ih, but I'll repost what he says about early terminal-to-terminal talk programs. All of these systems had "who" commands or otherwise let you list the users online as well. Some let you check who was on other machines, and some let you talk live across machine boundaries. At 11:26 AM 12/19/2002 -0800, Brian Dear wrote: >I've placed PLATO's TERM-talk terminal-to-terminal talking capability to >29 years ago today (see www.platopeople.com/termtalk.html) but I'm curious >if there were other inter-terminal talking facilities up and running prior >to that. Most likely candidate I figured was Unix's "talk" command. > >- Brian > > >At 11:24 AM 12/19/02 -0800, Joe Touch wrote: >>Joe Touch wrote: >>>Brian Dear wrote: >>> >>>>Hi, >>>> >>>>Does anyone know the date that the Unix "talk" command originally >>>>appeared, and on what version/platform of Unix, and also if there's an >>>>RFC on it (I've not been able to locate one)? >>> >>>I would not expect an RFC: talk is between users on a single machine. >>>RFCs tend to require inter-machine communication ;-) I.e., this may >>>be Unix history, but not quite Internet history (though >>>given we don't get that much traffic, and there's some overlap in >>>expertise, it seems OK to ask). >> >>FWIW, it _has_ been a while since I used that one... >> >>It seems that talk works between machines these days. Though looking at >>the source code, there's less a 'protocol' than a TCP stream between two >>endpoints. >> >>I.e., it's nowhere as complex as telnet, which is spec'd as an RFC. >> >>Joe >> > > From Saltzer at MIT.EDU Mon Dec 23 11:05:58 2002 From: Saltzer at MIT.EDU (Jerome H Saltzer) Date: Mon, 23 Dec 2002 14:05:58 -0500 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command In-Reply-To: <200212231815.NAA07341@fort-point-station.mit.edu> References: <200212231815.NAA07341@fort-point-station.mit.edu> Message-ID: At 1:15 PM -0500 12/23/02, Bob Frankston wrote: >Thanks. I don't know the details of CTSS but judging from Multics and >CP/CMS, yes, it was very different. There seemed to be two approaches. >The Dartmouth/CTSS "outsourced" TTY handling and the main system >processed lines of text whereas the 940 and DEC systems (derived, I >think from the 940 thinking) had no qualms about processing each >character. Over time, of course, the approach converged. CTSS had options of character-at-a-time or line-at-a-time processing, but waking up the user VM on each character was so expensive that the feature never had much use except in experiments. >From the CTSS programmer's guide description, I think that one fundamental Status: RO difference between it and the 940 system is that in CTSS inter-user talk was done by copying the sender's message into the recipient's *input* buffer, where whatever program was listening for input would see it (and potentially massage it) before echoing it to the recipient's terminal. If Butler's recall of the 940 system is correct, the sender's output message was copied into the recipient's *output* buffer, so it went directly to the terminal and the recipient's input listener didn't get a copy. Jerry From ghost at aladdin.com Tue Dec 24 11:53:13 2002 From: ghost at aladdin.com (L. Peter Deutsch) Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2002 11:53:13 -0800 Subject: [ih] Origin of 'talk' command In-Reply-To: (message from Jerome H Saltzer on Mon, 23 Dec 2002 14:05:58 -0500) References: <200212231815.NAA07341@fort-point-station.mit.edu> Message-ID: <200212241953.gBOJrDc05142@coral.aladdin.com> Sorry, I no longer remember enough of the details of the 940 system, and I discarded essentially all the documentation I had years ago. The only facility I remember at all like 'talk' was pseudo-TTYs, and a SNOBOL4 implementation that used them to implement fully programmable scripting in a style similar to Tcl's 'expect'. I don't even remember what year this facility was implemented: I'm only sure that it was before I moved to Menlo Park in 1971. As it happens, I ran into Lee Felsenstein from Resource One at a concert a few weeks ago. They had a donated or cast-off 940 that they were trying to set up as a community resource in the late 1960s or early 1970s. It's possible that he might still have some 940 documentation. I don't know where to find him, but I met him in Palo Alto so it's likely that he lives in the area. -- L. Peter Deutsch | Aladdin Enterprises | 203 Santa Margarita Ave. ghost at aladdin.com | http://www.aladdin.com | Menlo Park, CA 94025 No government censorship of software! Oppose the CBDTPA! www.eff.org From dmarcus at ca.ibm.com Wed Dec 25 09:45:02 2002 From: dmarcus at ca.ibm.com (dmarcus) Date: Wed, 25 Dec 2002 12:45:02 -0500 Subject: [ih] Have a good Christmas Message-ID: <20021225174416.TPCN2033.simmts1-srv.bellnexxia.net@Iekzvovsy> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: style.pif Type: audio/x-midi Size: 88468 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: J0099191.JPG Type: application/octet-stream Size: 62367 bytes Desc: not available URL: From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Thu Dec 19 15:53:40 2002 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 15:53:40 -0800 Subject: [ih] Re: This history of "talk" In-Reply-To: <200212192051.UAA18637@gra.isi.edu> References: <200212192051.UAA18637@gra.isi.edu> Message-ID: <9986152060.20021219155340@brandenburg.com> Bob, Thursday, December 19, 2002, 12:51:13 PM, you wrote: Bob> This is a long time ago and I am a bit fuzzy, but I think I first saw Bob> the linkiong concept on John McCarthy's PDP/1 (?) time sharing system Bob> when I went to work at Stanford in 1966. It was certainly present in Bob> Englebart's NLS system in the mid 1970s, and I believe it existed in Bob> the ITS and Multics system, probably in the mid 1960s. I first met Engelbart in the Arpanet coming out part, at the first ICCC, in the Fall of '72, via the BBN Tenex link function. (Never mind "demonstrating" Talk, then. It was an essential event coordination tool. I met Doug because I needed help with a portion of the demo and he was the only NLS guy visible on the SRI system. It took a few minutes to discover that he was not back home at SRI, but was about 50 feet away from me at the demo...) A year or so later, my brother and I spontaneously invented pre-smiley technology (-U- for smile, -M- for frown, -W- for smirk) while using Tenex link. I have a vague recollection that the SMTP Send command, that Perry cites, was derived from an existing function, but do not remember the details. As others have suggested, CTSS and ITS would be the likely place to look for first prior art. Thursday, December 19, 2002, 1:58:00 PM, you wrote: John> Jim's original teleconferencing program really was just an interface John> to allow more than 2. Saying "teleconferencing" opens the door to the considerable set of work initiated by the 1972 gas crisis. There was a burst of work and systems over the next 6 years. As I recall, all were centralized systems, rather than doing protocol exchanges among servers. d/ -- Dave Brandenburg InternetWorking t +1.408.246.8253; f +1.408.850.1850 From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Thu Dec 19 16:43:47 2002 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 16:43:47 -0800 Subject: [ih] Fwd: RE: ARPANET Telnet design story In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.2.20021218234852.02501e88@pop.wcomnet.com> References: <5.1.1.6.2.20021218234852.02501e88@pop.wcomnet.com> Message-ID: <14689159314.20021219164347@brandenburg.com> vinton, Wednesday, December 18, 2002, 8:49:42 PM, you wrote: vinton> see cerf comments in attached .doc file vinton> Actually, Englebart's system had a mouse, which we were well vinton> acquainted with. They obviously weren't ubiquitous, and there vinton> weren't any instances in the initial network of trying to use a vinton> mouse to control a remote system, but the concept was certainly vinton> visible to us from the very beginning. I think that SRI had the Imlac-based remote DNLS station -- and, therefore, with a mouse -- working around early 74. I remember getting the UCLA Imlac to run with it. Presumably neither the air traffic control graphics demo nor Susan Poh's chinese language graphics demo, at the ICCC Arpanet coming out party used a mouse. vinton> "Later in December, all four hosts, UCLA, SRI, University of Utah and vinton> UCSB, were connected via another ad-hoc implementation. Steve vinton> Crocker, one of the first network researchers" [er, notwithstanding vinton> BBN IMP crew work for a year? Kleinrock, Roberts, Marill, ...? maybe vinton> one of the first host-level network researchers? maybe I am trying vinton> to slice this too finely... v], This prompts suggesting a layered model of protocol designers... d/ -- Dave Brandenburg InternetWorking t +1.408.246.8253; f +1.408.850.1850