[ih] First file transfer on ARPANET

[John Day]

Yes, John is correct that if anything the emphasis was on resource 
sharing.  And at Illinois, we took this quite seriously.  There were 
several depts at Illinois using the Net.

We had people from the physics dept and from Argonne submitting jobs 
to run on the UCLA 360/91, and on the machine at the Rutherford High 
Energy lab in the UK. In fact, at one point we were the largest user 
of Rutherford.  There was lively (illegal) illegal transfers going on 
between CERN and Argonne through Rutherford.  (Much of this used the 
CCN RJE protocol.)

In addition, we were doing research generating graphics from ERTS 
satellite data.  We had wall sized line printer graphics (remember 
those?) of Chicago, San Francisco and the Urbana area.  Two things I 
remember about those were that we had close ups of O'Hare that we 
could see the planes and runways.  On some, there were clouds and you 
could see their shadow on the ground.

There was considerable amount energy related research going on. I 
remember some applications that would compute at the /91 and then 
ship data to a Tenex someplace to generate graphics files and then 
draw the picture back in Illinois.

We also developed a land use management system called NARIS in 1975 
for the 6 counties around Chicago, that used databases on both 
coasts.  Was very graphics based with maps down to the section 
(square mile).  It could display all sorts of land use and 
demographics information.  Much of this we did what we called an 
"intelligent terminal" (a sort of x-windows predecessor) with a strip 
down version of UNIX on an LSI-11 with a plasma screen and touch. 
The keyboard was only used if there was major data entry to do.

We were also running TNLS on an IMLAC to use Englebart's system.

And of course, starting in about 1971 all of our OS software 
development was done at UCSD and downloaded over the net to the 
PDP-11. (Initially an 11/20, later an 11/45).  In 1975, we put the 
first Unix up on the Net.

I have probably left out a half dozen of the resource sharing 
projects that we were doing.  They are probably in the annual 
reports.  No they didn't generate RFCs.  Why would they?  There was 
nothing to comment on.  People were simply using the Net as it was 
intended.

Yes, there is a very mistaken myth floating about that the ARPANET 
was only used the way Tymnet or Compuserve were used for terminal 
sessions. This was far from the case.   (Probably makes people today 
feel better about the fact that this is pretty much how they still 
use it, except it is called the web. )

Our biggest problem was that our vision quickly outstripped the 
capability of the computers of the day.  (NLS was a very good example 
of working beyond the ragged edge)  Our model was that the Net should 
be a virtual OS that we could just use.  Too bad those ideas were 
abandoned and we haven't moved very far in the last 35 years.

It really is too bad that the Internet ended up being more like DOS 
than a real OS.

At 11:30 -0500 2012/12/21, John Klensin wrote:
>On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 1:24 PM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
>>  You're splitting a rather fine hair (although I concede the accuracy of that
>>  hair): The TELNET protocol may _be_ a terminal device driver 
>>protocol, but it
>>  was mostly _used_ for remote login - and the server to which one 
>>connected at
>>  port 23 using it was a remote login service...
>
>Noel, to split another rather fine hair, but we've got several NVT
>protocols (Telnet without option negotiation and most of them defined
>that way) which, in the aggregate, have probably been used more than
>Telnet itself, especially in recent years.  Prominent members of the
>group include Finger, Whois, and FTP itself but I remember a lot of
>nearly ad hoc arrangements that probably never made it into the RFC
>series or other official network documents.
>
>The original claim about a focus on remote login is incorrect in
>another way.  To the extent to which there was a focus on anything
>other than getting the bits moving, it was on resource-sharing (and
>resource-sharing by users of the network, not just for development
>purposes).  Certainly both remote access to distant machines and file
>transfer were part of that picture.  But Lick was pushing us (and I
>presume other applications-oriented groups) by 1970-1971 toward
>demonstrating "real" resource-shared applications work.  The goal was
>that users would sit in front of local devices, dealing with their
>familiar local applications interfaces, and carry out calculations and
>other actions transparently as to whether programs and/or data were
>local or on remote machines.   The applications needed to be able to
>bring data to programs,  programs to data, and the presentation of
>both to the user.  Conversion of data formats and user interfaces
>would, necessarily, be invisible to the user as well and we were
>trying to build on some of Selfridge's ideas about agent programs as
>user interface tools for the latter.   We did some preliminary
>demonstrations of some applications working that way by about 1975 (in
>conjunction with some efforts at Illinois -- I'd have to paw through
>now-ancient annual reports to reconstruct just when).  Descriptions of
>those efforts never made it into the RFC series (probably for multiple
>reasons including that it was real applications work, that we had
>limited resources for those efforts, and that the work was not
>supported through IPTO).
>
>I guess one major thing we learned from those demonstrations was that
>the network and most host machines weren't nearly fast enough to make
>the ideas realistic for any but the most persistent and patient users.
>  I've never understood what finally killed the Datacomputer project,
>but have assumed that the speed/performance issues were part of that
>too.
>
>    john