From LarrySheldon at cox.net Mon Jun 3 22:29:29 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2013 00:29:29 -0500 Subject: [ih] "email"-- an opportunity. Message-ID: <51AD7B39.2040702@cox.net> Saw this in my daily wander through the intertubes: http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/50902/6-dictionary-mysteries-you-can-help-solve -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Tue Jun 4 06:44:18 2013 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2013 09:44:18 -0400 Subject: [ih] first use of "email" (redux) Message-ID: <51ADEF32.7010201@meetinghouse.net> Apropos recent discussions of the "inventor of email".... Just came across this: http://public.oed.com/appeals/email/ An appeal from the folks at the Oxford English Dictionary, seeking any use of the term earlier than 1979. Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Tue Jun 4 08:23:32 2013 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2013 17:23:32 +0200 Subject: [ih] first use of "email" (redux) In-Reply-To: <51ADEF32.7010201@meetinghouse.net> References: <51ADEF32.7010201@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <51AE0674.7000801@dcrocker.net> On 6/4/2013 3:44 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: > Apropos recent discussions of the "inventor of email".... > > Just came across this: > http://public.oed.com/appeals/email/ > > An appeal from the folks at the Oxford English Dictionary, seeking any > use of the term earlier than 1979. I've sent them a query, to find out their basis for citing 1979. I also just search the msggroup and header-people archives for the 1970s and could not find an occurrence of "email" or "e-mail". This surprised me. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From nigel at channelisles.net Tue Jun 4 09:04:51 2013 From: nigel at channelisles.net (Nigel Roberts) Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2013 17:04:51 +0100 Subject: [ih] first use of "email" (redux) In-Reply-To: <51AE0674.7000801@dcrocker.net> References: <51ADEF32.7010201@meetinghouse.net> <51AE0674.7000801@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <51AE1023.5080506@channelisles.net> My recollection based on TOPS-10 from 1977 and RSX-11 and VAX/VMS from 1980 is that the term email *wasn't* in general use. We called it "MAIL" without "e". (VAXmail and MAIL-11) On 06/04/2013 04:23 PM, Dave Crocker wrote: > On 6/4/2013 3:44 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: >> Apropos recent discussions of the "inventor of email".... >> >> Just came across this: >> http://public.oed.com/appeals/email/ >> >> An appeal from the folks at the Oxford English Dictionary, seeking any >> use of the term earlier than 1979. > > > I've sent them a query, to find out their basis for citing 1979. > > I also just search the msggroup and header-people archives for the > 1970s and could not find an occurrence of "email" or "e-mail". This > surprised me. > > d/ > > From brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com Tue Jun 4 16:17:27 2013 From: brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com (Brian E Carpenter) Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2013 11:17:27 +1200 Subject: [ih] first use of "email" (redux) In-Reply-To: <51AE1023.5080506@channelisles.net> References: <51ADEF32.7010201@meetinghouse.net> <51AE0674.7000801@dcrocker.net> <51AE1023.5080506@channelisles.net> Message-ID: <51AE7587.9010200@gmail.com> fwiw the proceedings of IETF 1 (1986) list the "Net Address" for each participant (of which only hw at gw.umich.edu would be conformant today). By IETF 6 (April 1987), the heading is "Email address". BTW - the IETF site has no proceedings for IETF 5 ("February 4-6, 1987; Moffett Field, California, USA; NASA Ames Research Center"). http://blog.modernmechanix.com/compuserve-trademarked-the-word-email/ Regards Brian On 05/06/2013 04:04, Nigel Roberts wrote: > My recollection based on TOPS-10 from 1977 and RSX-11 and VAX/VMS from > 1980 is that the term email *wasn't* in general use. > > We called it "MAIL" without "e". > > (VAXmail and MAIL-11) > > On 06/04/2013 04:23 PM, Dave Crocker wrote: >> On 6/4/2013 3:44 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: >>> Apropos recent discussions of the "inventor of email".... >>> >>> Just came across this: >>> http://public.oed.com/appeals/email/ >>> >>> An appeal from the folks at the Oxford English Dictionary, seeking any >>> use of the term earlier than 1979. >> >> >> I've sent them a query, to find out their basis for citing 1979. >> >> I also just search the msggroup and header-people archives for the >> 1970s and could not find an occurrence of "email" or "e-mail". This >> surprised me. >> >> d/ >> >> > > From amckenzie3 at yahoo.com Wed Jun 5 05:33:35 2013 From: amckenzie3 at yahoo.com (Alex McKenzie) Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2013 05:33:35 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ih] first use of "email" (redux) In-Reply-To: <51AE0674.7000801@dcrocker.net> References: <51ADEF32.7010201@meetinghouse.net> <51AE0674.7000801@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <1370435615.39347.YahooMailNeo@web142404.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> On January 4, 1978 ARPA published a "Completion Report" for the ARPAnet project (http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/chris/DIGITAL_ARCHIVE/ARPANET/DARPA4799.pdf).? In that report there are discussions of what we call email on pages III-113 to III-115 and III-131.? In both instances the term "network mail" was used.? This leads me to believe that the word "email" was not in common use in the ARPAnet community in the second half of 1977 when the report was written.? So it is easy for me to believe that the 1979 date given by the OED is correct. Cheers, Alex ________________________________ From: Dave Crocker To: Miles Fidelman Cc: "internet-history at postel.org" Sent: Tuesday, June 4, 2013 11:23 AM Subject: Re: [ih] first use of "email" (redux) On 6/4/2013 3:44 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: > Apropos recent discussions of the "inventor of email".... > > Just came across this: > http://public.oed.com/appeals/email/ > > An appeal from the folks at the Oxford English Dictionary, seeking any > use of the term earlier than 1979. I've sent them a query, to find out their basis for citing 1979. I also just search the msggroup and header-people archives for the 1970s and could not find an occurrence of "email" or "e-mail".? This surprised me. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jack at 3kitty.org Wed Jun 5 12:11:20 2013 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2013 12:11:20 -0700 Subject: [ih] first use of "email" (redux) In-Reply-To: <1370435615.39347.YahooMailNeo@web142404.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <51ADEF32.7010201@meetinghouse.net> <51AE0674.7000801@dcrocker.net> <1370435615.39347.YahooMailNeo@web142404.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51AF8D58.4090603@3kitty.org> I can offer a little perspective on this...it's been a long time! "Electronic mail" came in a lot of forms in the 1970s -- even telegrams, telex, fax, etc., but if we limit the context to "network mail" in the ARPANET, I think the history of FTP provides a good timeline. I was at MIT in the "Dynamic Modelling" or DM group, from 1970 through 1977 as grad student and then staff. Licklider ran this group, so it was focussed on his interests, i.e., how to use computers to assist human activities. Abhay Bhushan was also in that group. With our shiny new ARPANET IMP connection and NCP, we experimented with lots of things, including how to use the ARPANET to do things that we had been doing within our own isolated machine environment previously. One of those was "mail", which was simply the ability to drop a small "note" that another user would see when he or she next logged in. That was a feature common to many operating systems of the day. Everyone on the ARPANET was doing similar things. Abhay was involved in the FTP genesis, and authored the first spec (RFC 114) in April 1971, describing what was being done at MIT on at least 2 machines - MIT-Multics and MIT-DM - to create a file transfer capability. That capability was then used to implement crude "electronic mail", which worked simply by connecting to the "other" machine with FTP, and either STORing, or more likely APPEnding your "mail" to the existing mail file in the recipient's directory. People quickly wrote little wrapper programs so you didn't have to interact directly with FTP commands, and little programs that would run when you logged in and see if the file had been changed since last logout. ("You have new mail") It was crude but it worked. There was no structure to such messages -- no headers at all. The message was just whatever the human sender wrote. But people quickly started using standard office conventions for their mail, e.g., to show who it was from, what it was about, etc. Of course there were many such formats, since everyone could make their own just as they did on typewriters. The FTP spec was revised by Abhay in RFC 265, 17 November 1971, where it mentions that the minimal implementation provided the primitives necessary for the most common uses, i.e., it provided the "basic control functions necessary for basic file transfer and "mail" operations". As far as I have found, this is the earliest ARPANET community reference to "mail", almost certainly referring to the shenanigans going on at MIT and elsewhere to use the new ARPANET. "Mail" was accomplished by opening an FTP connection to the recipient's machine and using APPEnd to add your message to the recipient's mailbox file. The FTP spec was further expanded and revised in RFC 354 in July 1972. About that time, I was doing the mail implementation on MIT-DM (Lick *really* wanted to send mail to people at ARPA), and Ken Pogran was doing the Multics implementation. MIT-DM was an ITS operating system, which meant it was wide open, no security at all. Multics, OTOH, had very strict ideas about who was allowed to do what, and this was causing all sorts of problems with using those crude "mail" procedures involving who was allowed to write into files in someone else's space, and how to have a "server" process that acted on behalf of many users. As I recall, it was easy to collar Abhay -- his office was just down the hall. After sufficient badgering about the problems with using FTP to do these mail activities, he issued RFC 385 (August 18, 1972) which extended the FTP spec by the addition of two new commands "MAIL" and MLFL", which separated electronic mail functions from the rest of file transfer and manipulation. By distinguishing those as separate functions from regular operations like APPEnd, it became possible to write programs that had different capabilities for the different functions -- in particular a "mail server" that could have permission to manipulate certain files like "mailboxes". I view that RFC as the point where "mail" on the ARPANET began as a distinct service, and set the stage for further development of headers, mail protocols, etc., which occurred later through the 70s - as captured in RFCs 524, 561, 680, 724, and finally 733. All during the 70s, there was a *lot* of discussion about the "network mail" technology, but I can believe that the term "email" didn't arise until later. The term "electronic mail" would of course have to arise before the contraction to "email". But there were legal and political issues that, IMHO, forced the use of "ARPANET mail", or "network mail" during that period. "Electronic mail" was a forbidden term, in the ARPANET community. Here's why... In December 1980, AFIPS hosted an invitational workshop on "technical and policy issues in electronic mail and message systems" in Washington DC. I still have a copy of the Proceedings (I was listed as an author, which is probably why I still have it). There's unfortunately no publication number or other identification - it's a paperback 207-page book titled "Electronic Mail and Message Systems, Technical and Policy Perspectives", editted by Robert E. Kahn, Albert Vezza, and Alexander D. Roth, copyright 1981 by AFIPS. It's a good resource for anyone curious about the non-technical perspective on electronic mail at that time, and also the view from people outside the ARPANET community (i.e., most of the world). For example, one of the papers (by Steve Lukasik of the FCC) traces the origin of "electronic mail", or "electrical mail" to "the Post-Office-operated telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington starting in 1845". Yes, email began in 1845. Bet you didn't know that. I didn't. The paper from the White House notes: "Electronic Mail as 'Communication' -- there is a question about whether or not this new service is 'communications' or is something else. The FCC has not really attempted to answer that question." So, the Rest of World knew about "Electronic Mail" but wasn't quite sure what it was or how it fit in to the legal and bureaucratic framework. Whatever was going on within the ARPANET community was just an experiment, not to be worried about. Getting to the original question about "email".... As I recall, during the early 70s, we techies naturally used the postal system as a model for a starting point for our own work in "electronic mail". But we were also strongly encouraged to *avoid* saying anything that could be interpreted as working on a project to compete with or replace "snail mail" or any other form of established communications service. Such a project would have strong domestic and international ramifications, with the regulations, treaties, labor relations, tariffs, etc., associated with interstate and international commerce, PTTs, etc., etc., etc. So whatever we were doing, it wasn't that. "Electronic mail", in those days, meant things like Western Union, Telex, TWX, Fax, etc., all of which were well established, heavily regulated, defended by stacks of laws and treaties, and entrenched. So whatever we were doing couldn't possibly be "electronic mail". It was far better to call it "network mail". And just wait. IMHO, the ARPANET created "network mail". Some time later, people recognized it as yet another form of "electronic mail". Some time after that, they forgot about all the earlier forms like TWX etc., and "email" became synonymous with and subsumed "network mail". Enjoy! /Jack Haverty On 06/05/2013 05:33 AM, Alex McKenzie wrote: > On January 4, 1978 ARPA published a "Completion Report" for the > ARPAnet project > (http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/chris/DIGITAL_ARCHIVE/ARPANET/DARPA4799.pdf). > In that report there are discussions of what we call email on pages > III-113 to III-115 and III-131. In both instances the term "network > mail" was used. This leads me to believe that the word "email" was > not in common use in the ARPAnet community in the second half of 1977 > when the report was written. So it is easy for me to believe that the > 1979 date given by the OED is correct. > > Cheers, > Alex > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > *From:* Dave Crocker > *To:* Miles Fidelman > *Cc:* "internet-history at postel.org" > *Sent:* Tuesday, June 4, 2013 11:23 AM > *Subject:* Re: [ih] first use of "email" (redux) > > On 6/4/2013 3:44 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: > > Apropos recent discussions of the "inventor of email".... > > > > Just came across this: > > http://public.oed.com/appeals/email/ > > > > An appeal from the folks at the Oxford English Dictionary, seeking any > > use of the term earlier than 1979. > > > I've sent them a query, to find out their basis for citing 1979. > > I also just search the msggroup and header-people archives for the 1970s > and could not find an occurrence of "email" or "e-mail". This > surprised me. > > d/ > > > -- > Dave Crocker > Brandenburg InternetWorking > bbiw.net > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Wed Jun 5 14:18:14 2013 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2013 23:18:14 +0200 Subject: [ih] first use of "email" (redux) In-Reply-To: <51AF8D58.4090603@3kitty.org> References: <51ADEF32.7010201@meetinghouse.net> <51AE0674.7000801@dcrocker.net> <1370435615.39347.YahooMailNeo@web142404.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <51AF8D58.4090603@3kitty.org> Message-ID: <51AFAB16.4020908@dcrocker.net> On 6/5/2013 9:11 PM, Jack Haverty wrote: > All during the 70s, there was a *lot* of discussion about the "network > mail" technology, but I can believe that the term "email" didn't arise > until later. The term "electronic mail" would of course have to arise > before the contraction to "email". But there were legal and political > issues that, IMHO, forced the use of "ARPANET mail", or "network mail" > during that period. > > "Electronic mail" was a forbidden term, in the ARPANET community. Here's > why... Jack, Interesting bit of history. Perhaps some formal ARPA documents had a prohibition, but the community did not. We used the terms "mail", "network mail" and "electronic mail" pretty regularly and clearly pretty casually. Certainly these terms are scattered throughout the earliest mailing lists: First, Msggroup, which discussed use and directions for email, and then Header-People, which discussed email technology. What does /not/ appear in the archives for either in the 70s are the terms "e-mail" or "email". Sigh. Some quick bits of research, without trying to be all that diligent, but to show how broadly the term 'electronic mail' was indeed used amongst the Arpanet community: MsgGroup: > Date: 8 JUN 1975 1629-PDT > From: DCROCKER at USC-ISI > Subject: MSGGROUP# 004 Use of a Teleconferencing system, in place of Net Mail > To: MessageGroup: > > I have spent the better part of this past spring looking at our > teleconferencing capabilities (part of a seminar at ISI) and, as a > result, suggest we continue to use Network mail as our communications > tool, rather than using TCTALK or FORUM. ... > Use of Net Mail a) is extrememly convenient for most, if not all, of > us, since we already exercise it for other activities; b) allows > passive observation of the dialogue, rather than forcing > everyone to explicitly catch up on recent comments (5 of us > recently blew off any casual observers to our seminar by doubling > the size of our online transcript, in the space of 10 days. and > Date: 5 JAN 76 1353-PST > From: Geoff at SRI-AI > Subject: MSGGROUP# 248 ARPAnet mail the coming thing? > Action-to: [ISI]Mailing.List: > Message-Id: <[FAKE]-19-((76 1 7) (22 32 8) "PST").STEFFERUD> > > Hi all, > > I was reading the news via SU-AI's New York Times and AP news wire system > last night, when I came accross an artical on how the post office is > worried that they might get ripped off if everyone goes the ARPAnet mail > route in the future; so Stef and I thought it might spark some conversation > if I sent the artical around to you all. > > [Geoff] > > <<<<<<----->>>>>> > > a018 2304 04 Jan 76 > Electronic Mail Bjt 490, 2 takes 610 > By JEFFREY MILLS > Associated Press Writer > WASHINGTON (AP) - The Postal Service is beginning to worry about > competition from electronic communication systems which threaten to > make mailmen obsolete. ... > Describing the technological change facing the service, Ellington > said, ''The majority of business mail already is generated by computer > - computerized invoices, computerized addresses or what have you. > Once you have a relationship like that, you have to ask why not just > send the message from one computer to another without the middleman.'' > The message industry envisions a receiver in everyone's home to > receive messages 24 hours a day. A customer upon awakening would find > all of his ''mail'' in a tray waiting for him. The technology for > such systems may already exist in microwaves and satellite channels. and > Date: 20 JAN 76 1406-PST > From: STEFFERUD at USC-ISI > Subject: MSGGROUP# 271 Situation as of 20 JAN 1976 > Action-to: [ISI]Mailing.List: > Message-Id: <[FAKE]-2-((76 1 20) (14 53 48) "PST").STEFFERUD> > > Per Steve Walker's request that I assemble the votes on > "primitive" or "core" or "basic" commands, I have reviewed the > message traffic on the subject and find that we have constructed a > nicely complex problem space to get lost in. To sort out the > issues, I want to send a set of separate messages to explain where > we seem to be at and to frame the "ballot" so you can vote. If > possible, I would like to display my perception of the latent > consensus position of the group so you can react to the more > important issues without beating dead horses. > > My first comments focus on the question: "What are we trying to > do?" > > Answer: We are trying to proceed in an evolutionary way to a > rich, ppowerful, consistent, comprehensible, forgiving, > implementable set of message systems that will cater to the many > various needs of a wide range of potential future users of ARPANET > Electronic Mail Systems. and > From: RYLAND at RUTGERS-10 > Subject: MSGGROUP# 277 Building Comfortable Message Systems, I > Action-to: msggroup at USC-ISI > Message-Id: <[FAKE]-5-((76 2 6) (12 32 11) "PST").STEFFERUD> > > Building Comfortable Message Systems, I > > Before we vote on the basic set of standard message system > commands and objects, I would like to make explicit an assumption > that has appeared a number of times in the message group > dialogue: to build comfortable, usable message systems, we must > keep the user as much in his normal, everyday world as possible. > In otherwords, we need to build systems which interact with a > user in "real world" terms, insofar as thisis possible in the new > context of electronic mail systems. and > Date: 17 Feb 1977 at 0922-PST > Subject: MSGGROUP# 461 INTRODUCTION from Stock Gaines at RAND-UNIX > Subject: Re: MSGGROUP# 460 Request for Voluntary Introductions > From: Gaines at Rand-Unix > To: MsgGroup at Usc-Isi > Message-ID: <[Rand-Unix]17-Feb-77 09:22:18.Gaines> > In-Reply-To: Your Message of 16 FEB 1977 2217-PST > In-Reply-To: <[USC-ISI]16-FEB-77 22:17:42.STEFFERUD> > > I am a member of the Information Sciences Dept. at Rand. I am a recent > convert to the use of mail systems. I am interested in the evolution > of ideas about electronic mail, and more generally in communications > via computer as a major aspect of new interactive uses of computers. > I am also interested in the system questions which arise here, such > as process structuring questions, file and directory system questions, > etc. Header-People: > Date: 25 May 1977 1131-EDT > From: Brian Reid at CMU-10A > Subject: RFC724 and non-ARPA networks > To: Pogran at MIT-Multics, MsgGroup at ISI, Header-People at MIT-MC > CC: Reid at CMU-10A > Sender: BRIAN.REID at CMU-10A > Message-ID: [CMU-10A] 25 May 1977 11:31:18 Brian Reid > In-Reply-To: RFC724 > > Even while the packets are buzzing with news about other soon-to-be > networks, and even though many of us are passionately committed to > both personal computing and electronic mail, I don't see any mention > in RFC724 that there might possibly be other networks with which we > would like to interface. and > Date: 6 Jul 1977 1134-PDT > Sender: GEOFF at SRI-KA > Subject: Re: Re: headers > From: GEOFF at SRI-KA > To: BRIAN.REID at CMU-10A > Cc: Frankston at MIT-MULTICS, ktp at MIT-MULTICS, > Cc: crd at MIT-MULTICS, dmw at MIT-MULTICS, pg at MIT-MULTICS, > Cc: header-people at MIT-MC > Message-ID: <[SRI-KA] 6-Jul-77 11:34:34.GEOFF> > In-Reply-To: [CMU-10A] 6 Jul 1977 11:25:37 Brian Reid > > I think you are being a bit wise and K foolish or whatever the > transmorgrified expression ought to be. > > When you look at systems like ISI, BBN, SRI-KA, etc, where the > MAJORITY of the entire system is for the express purpose of > people mananging their electronic mail over the ARPANET, then you > know how expensive it really is. When you recieve and send 30 to > 70 messages a day average, then what you 'consider' free is > rather expensive. Not all systems have unlimited disk space you > know. And it is not true at all about time to process a mail > header is free - maybe that is so on a KL-10, when when you are > on a KA you can darn well feel it when the loag avg is roaring. -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From LarrySheldon at cox.net Wed Jun 5 14:45:29 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2013 16:45:29 -0500 Subject: [ih] "email"-- an opportunity. In-Reply-To: <51AD7B39.2040702@cox.net> References: <51AD7B39.2040702@cox.net> Message-ID: <51AFB179.5090008@cox.net> On 6/4/2013 12:29 AM, Larry Sheldon wrote: > Saw this in my daily wander through the intertubes: > > http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/50902/6-dictionary-mysteries-you-can-help-solve While my mention apparently did not attract any attention a later mention attracted all kinds of interesting comment, much of which I had never read about before (y'all frightened the post office? that's funny.) I hope somebody will send a recap to the authors of it the articles that started all the discussion this pass. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu Wed Jun 5 15:09:29 2013 From: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2013 18:09:29 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ih] "email"-- an opportunity. Message-ID: <20130605220929.7E20318C09B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> > From: Larry Sheldon > (y'all frightened the post office? that's funny.) Why? It was not without reason; check out the stats on first-class mail volume - it's estimated that it's taken a _huge_ hit from email. On the subject of the term 'email' - I have this vague memory that it came from outside 'our' community, which would explain why it doesn't appear in archives. I think we just called it 'mail' or 'network mail'. I have some very old business cards from MIT/etc which give my email address, and one labels it 'ARPANet Address', another just 'Net'. Noel From jack at 3kitty.org Wed Jun 5 15:34:22 2013 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2013 15:34:22 -0700 Subject: [ih] first use of "email" (redux) In-Reply-To: <51AFAB16.4020908@dcrocker.net> References: <51ADEF32.7010201@meetinghouse.net> <51AE0674.7000801@dcrocker.net> <1370435615.39347.YahooMailNeo@web142404.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <51AF8D58.4090603@3kitty.org> <51AFAB16.4020908@dcrocker.net> Message-ID: <51AFBCEE.9050005@gmail.com> Hi Dave, You're right -- I should have said "early 70s", i.e., the time frame (1971 up to maybe 1974?) of the series of RFCs about FTP, which I think is before those various mailing lists started. Also, my experience was from the perspective of MIT, and in particular of Licklider's group. Lick wanted to make sure we didn't constrain our thinking to merely replicating the postal system in electronic form. Also, because of his ARPA involvement, he may have been more wary of the political risks, since our funding, to work on "dynamic modelling" (which included the ARPANET work), came from the government. One can imagine some contracting officer holding up a contract pending FCC approval.... So, perhaps that avoidance of "electronic mail" I remembered was in just a part of that early ARPANET community. In the 1971-73 or so era, the "electronic mail" community was still pretty small until some widely accepted standards started to congeal, in particular for the format of message headers. I recall that, from MIT, we had to communicate with BBN systems in order to be able to communicate with ARPA people who used the timesharing systems at ISI. But I can't recall what other systems were online for mail in the very early 70s -- i.e., hosts who first implemented the MAIL and MLFL commands, before there were any kind of standardized headers. When you ran into someone in the hallway, you might have said "Did you read your mail yet?", but I don't recall ever hearing "Did you read your electronic mail yet?" or "Did you get your email?" Back then, once you got "onto the ARPANET", "mail" suddenly became what you got on your terminal, not what got dumped in your desk tray. /Jack On 06/05/2013 02:18 PM, Dave Crocker wrote: > On 6/5/2013 9:11 PM, Jack Haverty wrote: >> All during the 70s, there was a *lot* of discussion about the "network >> mail" technology, but I can believe that the term "email" didn't arise >> until later. The term "electronic mail" would of course have to arise >> before the contraction to "email". But there were legal and political >> issues that, IMHO, forced the use of "ARPANET mail", or "network mail" >> during that period. >> >> "Electronic mail" was a forbidden term, in the ARPANET community. Here's >> why... > > > Jack, > > Interesting bit of history. Perhaps some formal ARPA documents had a > prohibition, but the community did not. > > We used the terms "mail", "network mail" and "electronic mail" pretty > regularly and clearly pretty casually. Certainly these terms are > scattered throughout the earliest mailing lists: First, Msggroup, > which discussed use and directions for email, and then Header-People, > which discussed email technology. > > What does /not/ appear in the archives for either in the 70s are the > terms "e-mail" or "email". Sigh. > > Some quick bits of research, without trying to be all that diligent, > but to show how broadly the term 'electronic mail' was indeed used > amongst the Arpanet community: > > > MsgGroup: > >> Date: 8 JUN 1975 1629-PDT >> From: DCROCKER at USC-ISI >> Subject: MSGGROUP# 004 Use of a Teleconferencing system, in place of >> Net Mail >> To: MessageGroup: >> >> I have spent the better part of this past spring looking at our >> teleconferencing capabilities (part of a seminar at ISI) and, as a >> result, suggest we continue to use Network mail as our communications >> tool, rather than using TCTALK or FORUM. > ... >> Use of Net Mail a) is extrememly convenient for most, if not all, of >> us, since we already exercise it for other activities; b) allows >> passive observation of the dialogue, rather than forcing >> everyone to explicitly catch up on recent comments (5 of us >> recently blew off any casual observers to our seminar by doubling >> the size of our online transcript, in the space of 10 days. > > > and > > >> Date: 5 JAN 76 1353-PST >> From: Geoff at SRI-AI >> Subject: MSGGROUP# 248 ARPAnet mail the coming thing? >> Action-to: [ISI]Mailing.List: >> Message-Id: <[FAKE]-19-((76 1 7) (22 32 8) "PST").STEFFERUD> >> >> Hi all, >> >> I was reading the news via SU-AI's New York Times and AP news wire >> system >> last night, when I came accross an artical on how the post office is >> worried that they might get ripped off if everyone goes the ARPAnet mail >> route in the future; so Stef and I thought it might spark some >> conversation >> if I sent the artical around to you all. >> >> [Geoff] >> >> <<<<<<----->>>>>> >> >> a018 2304 04 Jan 76 >> Electronic Mail Bjt 490, 2 takes 610 >> By JEFFREY MILLS >> Associated Press Writer >> WASHINGTON (AP) - The Postal Service is beginning to worry about >> competition from electronic communication systems which threaten to >> make mailmen obsolete. > ... >> Describing the technological change facing the service, Ellington >> said, ''The majority of business mail already is generated by computer >> - computerized invoices, computerized addresses or what have you. >> Once you have a relationship like that, you have to ask why not just >> send the message from one computer to another without the middleman.'' >> The message industry envisions a receiver in everyone's home to >> receive messages 24 hours a day. A customer upon awakening would find >> all of his ''mail'' in a tray waiting for him. The technology for >> such systems may already exist in microwaves and satellite channels. > > > and > > >> Date: 20 JAN 76 1406-PST >> From: STEFFERUD at USC-ISI >> Subject: MSGGROUP# 271 Situation as of 20 JAN 1976 >> Action-to: [ISI]Mailing.List: >> Message-Id: <[FAKE]-2-((76 1 20) (14 53 48) "PST").STEFFERUD> >> >> Per Steve Walker's request that I assemble the votes on >> "primitive" or "core" or "basic" commands, I have reviewed the >> message traffic on the subject and find that we have constructed a >> nicely complex problem space to get lost in. To sort out the >> issues, I want to send a set of separate messages to explain where >> we seem to be at and to frame the "ballot" so you can vote. If >> possible, I would like to display my perception of the latent >> consensus position of the group so you can react to the more >> important issues without beating dead horses. >> >> My first comments focus on the question: "What are we trying to >> do?" >> >> Answer: We are trying to proceed in an evolutionary way to a >> rich, ppowerful, consistent, comprehensible, forgiving, >> implementable set of message systems that will cater to the many >> various needs of a wide range of potential future users of ARPANET >> Electronic Mail Systems. > > > and > > >> From: RYLAND at RUTGERS-10 >> Subject: MSGGROUP# 277 Building Comfortable Message Systems, I >> Action-to: msggroup at USC-ISI >> Message-Id: <[FAKE]-5-((76 2 6) (12 32 11) "PST").STEFFERUD> >> >> Building Comfortable Message Systems, I >> >> Before we vote on the basic set of standard message system >> commands and objects, I would like to make explicit an assumption >> that has appeared a number of times in the message group >> dialogue: to build comfortable, usable message systems, we must >> keep the user as much in his normal, everyday world as possible. >> In otherwords, we need to build systems which interact with a >> user in "real world" terms, insofar as thisis possible in the new >> context of electronic mail systems. > > > and > > >> Date: 17 Feb 1977 at 0922-PST >> Subject: MSGGROUP# 461 INTRODUCTION from Stock Gaines at RAND-UNIX >> Subject: Re: MSGGROUP# 460 Request for Voluntary Introductions >> From: Gaines at Rand-Unix >> To: MsgGroup at Usc-Isi >> Message-ID: <[Rand-Unix]17-Feb-77 09:22:18.Gaines> >> In-Reply-To: Your Message of 16 FEB 1977 2217-PST >> In-Reply-To: <[USC-ISI]16-FEB-77 22:17:42.STEFFERUD> >> >> I am a member of the Information Sciences Dept. at Rand. I am a recent >> convert to the use of mail systems. I am interested in the evolution >> of ideas about electronic mail, and more generally in communications >> via computer as a major aspect of new interactive uses of computers. >> I am also interested in the system questions which arise here, such >> as process structuring questions, file and directory system questions, >> etc. > > > > Header-People: > >> Date: 25 May 1977 1131-EDT >> From: Brian Reid at CMU-10A >> Subject: RFC724 and non-ARPA networks >> To: Pogran at MIT-Multics, MsgGroup at ISI, Header-People at >> MIT-MC >> CC: Reid at CMU-10A >> Sender: BRIAN.REID at CMU-10A >> Message-ID: [CMU-10A] 25 May 1977 11:31:18 Brian Reid >> In-Reply-To: RFC724 >> >> Even while the packets are buzzing with news about other soon-to-be >> networks, and even though many of us are passionately committed to >> both personal computing and electronic mail, I don't see any mention >> in RFC724 that there might possibly be other networks with which we >> would like to interface. > > and > >> Date: 6 Jul 1977 1134-PDT >> Sender: GEOFF at SRI-KA >> Subject: Re: Re: headers >> From: GEOFF at SRI-KA >> To: BRIAN.REID at CMU-10A >> Cc: Frankston at MIT-MULTICS, ktp at MIT-MULTICS, >> Cc: crd at MIT-MULTICS, dmw at MIT-MULTICS, pg at MIT-MULTICS, >> Cc: header-people at MIT-MC >> Message-ID: <[SRI-KA] 6-Jul-77 11:34:34.GEOFF> >> In-Reply-To: [CMU-10A] 6 Jul 1977 11:25:37 Brian Reid >> >> I think you are being a bit wise and K foolish or whatever the >> transmorgrified expression ought to be. >> >> When you look at systems like ISI, BBN, SRI-KA, etc, where the >> MAJORITY of the entire system is for the express purpose of >> people mananging their electronic mail over the ARPANET, then you >> know how expensive it really is. When you recieve and send 30 to >> 70 messages a day average, then what you 'consider' free is >> rather expensive. Not all systems have unlimited disk space you >> know. And it is not true at all about time to process a mail >> header is free - maybe that is so on a KL-10, when when you are >> on a KA you can darn well feel it when the loag avg is roaring. > > > From jack at 3kitty.org Wed Jun 5 16:20:03 2013 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2013 16:20:03 -0700 Subject: [ih] "email"-- an opportunity. In-Reply-To: <20130605220929.7E20318C09B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20130605220929.7E20318C09B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <51AFC7A3.8050801@3kitty.org> Yes, they were more than a little concerned. But it was all under control.... That 1980 workshop I cited also contains a paper by the President of the National Association of Letter Carriers, which notes: "eventually, however, the Postal Service too recognized that it could not afford to ignore the revolution in electronic technology, and in September, 1978, it submitted its E-COM proposal to the Postal Rate Commission. ... ...we took the position that if the Postal Service were excluded from the field of electronic mail, the Service's demise was inevitable". Another paper, by the Senior Assistant Postmaster General, notes: "Over ten years ago, the Postal Service saw the rapidly increasing technological innovations in electronic communications as an evolutionary change that could be adapted ... transporting the mail electronically..." and "E-COM will be our initial domestic service using common carriers" and "we have accepted the President's Directive of July 19, 1979 to establish a separate and clearly identifiable electronic mail entity" Note that last quote was from 1980, so "over ten years ago" would have been before the ARPANET even existed. So, the "official" direction for electronic mail was established. It would be provided by the Postal Service in an evolutionary way. The ARPANET "network mail" was an interesting experiment -- not to be confused with the implementation of "electronic mail" which was already being handled through proper channels. Or so it seemed. I suspect there's some fascinating history of electronic mail involving that E-COM proposal and why it never happened. Sounds like another case where the experimental system trounced the official one......later repeated by TCP, etc., etc. But I can't find anywhere either where they call it email. But I agree with Noel -- I think the term "email" came from outside our community. I vaguely recall first seeing it in something like a trade magazine or newspaper article. /Jack On 06/05/2013 03:09 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: Larry Sheldon > > > (y'all frightened the post office? that's funny.) > > Why? It was not without reason; check out the stats on first-class mail > volume - it's estimated that it's taken a _huge_ hit from email. > > > On the subject of the term 'email' - I have this vague memory that it came > from outside 'our' community, which would explain why it doesn't appear in > archives. I think we just called it 'mail' or 'network mail'. > > I have some very old business cards from MIT/etc which give my email address, > and one labels it 'ARPANet Address', another just 'Net'. > > Noel -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Wed Jun 5 20:20:02 2013 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2013 23:20:02 -0400 Subject: [ih] "email"-- an opportunity. In-Reply-To: <51AFC7A3.8050801@3kitty.org> References: <20130605220929.7E20318C09B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <51AFC7A3.8050801@3kitty.org> Message-ID: <51AFFFE2.3070605@meetinghouse.net> Jack Haverty wrote: > > I suspect there's some fascinating history of electronic mail > involving that E-COM proposal and why it never happened. Sounds like > another case where the experimental system trounced the official > one......later repeated by TCP, etc., etc. > > But I can't find anywhere either where they call it email. But I agree > with Noel -- I think the term "email" came from outside our community. > I vaguely recall first seeing it in something like a trade magazine or > newspaper article. > The OECD "appeal" included this: ---------------- The /OED/ currently has a first quotation for /electronic mail/ in this sense from 1975; the shorter /email/ is first attested four years later, in 1979. Although this doesn?t seem like a very large gap in time, it seems unlikely that the 1979 quotation represents the coinage of /email/, taken as it is from a professional journal: //1979 /Electronics/ 7 June 63 (heading) Postal Service pushes ahead with E-mail. It seems probable that a computer whiz somewhere may have used /email /first. Perhaps earlier evidence lies in an internal company memo, a software manual, or even in an item of ?electronic mail?? We?d like your help in finding such an example. ------------------ ** -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From jeanjour at comcast.net Wed Jun 5 20:52:42 2013 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2013 23:52:42 -0400 Subject: [ih] "email"-- an opportunity. In-Reply-To: <51AFFFE2.3070605@meetinghouse.net> References: <20130605220929.7E20318C09B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <51AFC7A3.8050801@3kitty.org> <51AFFFE2.3070605@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: It is highly likely that "email" or "e-mail" occurred in email or other informal communication long before it appeared in print. The problem is that with electronic media of the time, i.e. having equipment that would still read it, we may well have lost those occurrences. At 11:20 PM -0400 6/5/13, Miles Fidelman wrote: >Jack Haverty wrote: >> >>I suspect there's some fascinating history of electronic mail >>involving that E-COM proposal and why it never happened. Sounds >>like another case where the experimental system trounced the >>official one......later repeated by TCP, etc., etc. >> >>But I can't find anywhere either where they call it email. But I >>agree with Noel -- I think the term "email" came from outside our >>community. I vaguely recall first seeing it in something like a >>trade magazine or newspaper article. >> > >The OECD "appeal" included this: > >---------------- >The /OED/ currently has a first quotation for /electronic mail/ in >this sense from 1975; the shorter /email/ is first attested four >years later, in 1979. Although this doesn't seem like a very large >gap in time, it seems unlikely that the 1979 quotation represents >the coinage of /email/, taken as it is from a professional journal: > > //1979 /Electronics/ 7 June 63 (heading) Postal Service pushes ahead > with E-mail. > >It seems probable that a computer whiz somewhere may have used >/email /first. Perhaps earlier evidence lies in an internal company >memo, a software manual, or even in an item of 'electronic mail'? >We'd like your help in finding such an example. >------------------ > >** > >-- >In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. >In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From jack at 3kitty.org Wed Jun 5 23:01:07 2013 From: jack at 3kitty.org (Jack Haverty) Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2013 23:01:07 -0700 Subject: [ih] "email"-- an opportunity. In-Reply-To: References: <20130605220929.7E20318C09B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <51AFC7A3.8050801@3kitty.org> <51AFFFE2.3070605@meetinghouse.net> Message-ID: <51B025A3.2090902@3kitty.org> I'm not so sure that a techie would necessarily have coined the term "email". I can't recall any other such 70s construction -- "e-file", or "e-message" or "e-typewriter" or whatever. Does anybody else? Everything we did was "E-" so it would have been redundant. Even today, what other e-things are there...? On the other hand, the USPS did have "E-COM", so it seems reasonable that the "E-" construction came from outside the ARPANET community, where "mail" still meant that stuff that appeared once a day in the inbox sitting on your desk, and a new term was needed to describe the fancy new stuff. It's quite possible that I'm remembering that Electronics article in 1979. That was not long after the Postal Service proposal. I suspect there was a lot of trade press coverage about that, even if it didn't matter much to us ARPANET denizens. I do recall reading Electronics back then. It of course must have arrived via my inbox, desktop variety. It seems to me plausible that some writer or editor decided that "electronic mail" was too unwieldy and just shortened it to "e-mail" following the lead of the Postal Service with "E-COM". The OED may be interested in hearing that, with all the august oldtimers on this list, none have (yet) recalled or found a pre-1979 use of the term "e-mail". That in itself is an interesting data point. We didn't call ourselves "whiz" either. The highest technical accolade was "hacker". "Whiz" involved porcelain. /Jack On 06/05/2013 08:52 PM, John Day wrote: > It is highly likely that "email" or "e-mail" occurred in email or > other informal communication long before it appeared in print. The > problem is that with electronic media of the time, i.e. having > equipment that would still read it, we may well have lost those > occurrences. > > At 11:20 PM -0400 6/5/13, Miles Fidelman wrote: >> Jack Haverty wrote: >>> >>> I suspect there's some fascinating history of electronic mail >>> involving that E-COM proposal and why it never happened. Sounds like >>> another case where the experimental system trounced the official >>> one......later repeated by TCP, etc., etc. >>> >>> But I can't find anywhere either where they call it email. But I >>> agree with Noel -- I think the term "email" came from outside our >>> community. I vaguely recall first seeing it in something like a >>> trade magazine or newspaper article. >>> >> >> The OECD "appeal" included this: >> >> ---------------- >> The /OED/ currently has a first quotation for /electronic mail/ in >> this sense from 1975; the shorter /email/ is first attested four >> years later, in 1979. Although this doesn't seem like a very large >> gap in time, it seems unlikely that the 1979 quotation represents the >> coinage of /email/, taken as it is from a professional journal: >> >> //1979 /Electronics/ 7 June 63 (heading) Postal Service pushes ahead >> with E-mail. >> >> It seems probable that a computer whiz somewhere may have used /email >> /first. Perhaps earlier evidence lies in an internal company memo, a >> software manual, or even in an item of 'electronic mail'? We'd like >> your help in finding such an example. >> ------------------ >> >> ** >> >> -- >> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. >> In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra > From dhc2 at dcrocker.net Wed Jun 5 23:43:40 2013 From: dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave Crocker) Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 08:43:40 +0200 Subject: [ih] "email"-- an opportunity. In-Reply-To: <51B025A3.2090902@3kitty.org> References: <20130605220929.7E20318C09B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <51AFC7A3.8050801@3kitty.org> <51AFFFE2.3070605@meetinghouse.net> <51B025A3.2090902@3kitty.org> Message-ID: <51B02F9C.9040309@dcrocker.net> On 6/6/2013 8:01 AM, Jack Haverty wrote: > > The OED may be interested in hearing that, with all the august oldtimers > on this list, none have (yet) recalled or found a pre-1979 use of the > term "e-mail". That in itself is an interesting data point. well, ummm... Ayyurday's system was written in 1978. If I recall the code segments I've seen, it did use the string "EMAIL". A reasonable guess would be that this was due to the professor who commissioned his summer work, rather than his own creation. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking bbiw.net From LarrySheldon at cox.net Thu Jun 6 00:44:33 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 02:44:33 -0500 Subject: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square Message-ID: <51B03DE1.1060901@cox.net> The other day I read a posting someplace about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests. While reading the article I mistakenly took something the author said to mean that he (she) thought the Internet was involved. (I have since found it briefly and the author said nothing of the sort.) I said I thought that the technological enabler in those protests was the PC-connected printer. But now I am worried that I am wrong about that too. I do think I remember reading that somewhere at the time--but I don't have a notion now about how they passed data around. Disks? BBSs? Any of you folks who actually know have an opinion? It is interesting to note that Thunderbird seems to have "Tiananmen" miss-spelt as "Tienanmen" -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From joly at punkcast.com Thu Jun 6 02:14:38 2013 From: joly at punkcast.com (Joly MacFie) Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2013 05:14:38 -0400 Subject: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square In-Reply-To: <51B03DE1.1060901@cox.net> References: <51B03DE1.1060901@cox.net> Message-ID: I think consensus is that it was the fax machine.. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,957964,00.html http://www.evolutionshift.com/blog/2009/06/03/tiananmen-square-and-technology/ On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 3:44 AM, Larry Sheldon wrote: > The other day I read a posting someplace about the anniversary of the > Tiananmen Square protests. > > While reading the article I mistakenly took something the author said to > mean that he (she) thought the Internet was involved. (I have since found > it briefly and the author said nothing of the sort.) > > I said I thought that the technological enabler in those protests was the > PC-connected printer. > > But now I am worried that I am wrong about that too. I do think I > remember reading that somewhere at the time--but I don't have a notion now > about how they passed data around. Disks? BBSs? > > Any of you folks who actually know have an opinion? > > It is interesting to note that Thunderbird seems to have "Tiananmen" > miss-spelt as "Tienanmen" > -- > Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics > of System Administrators: > Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to > learn from their mistakes. > (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) > -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org -------------------------------------------------------------- - -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mfidelman at meetinghouse.net Thu Jun 6 02:46:56 2013 From: mfidelman at meetinghouse.net (Miles Fidelman) Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 05:46:56 -0400 Subject: [ih] "email"-- an opportunity. In-Reply-To: <51B025A3.2090902@3kitty.org> References: <20130605220929.7E20318C09B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <51AFC7A3.8050801@3kitty.org> <51AFFFE2.3070605@meetinghouse.net> <51B025A3.2090902@3kitty.org> Message-ID: <51B05A90.1080904@meetinghouse.net> Jack Haverty wrote: > I'm not so sure that a techie would necessarily have coined the term > "email". I can't recall any other such 70s construction -- "e-file", > or "e-message" or "e-typewriter" or whatever. Does anybody else? > Everything we did was "E-" so it would have been redundant. Even > today, what other e-things are there...? I recall that the MIT PDP-1 had a different "e word" - as in "expensive typewriter" and "expensive desk calculator" - don't remember anybody shortening it to "e-" Miles Fidelman -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra From jeanjour at comcast.net Thu Jun 6 03:56:23 2013 From: jeanjour at comcast.net (John Day) Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2013 06:56:23 -0400 Subject: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square In-Reply-To: <51B03DE1.1060901@cox.net> References: <51B03DE1.1060901@cox.net> Message-ID: Tien-an-men or Tian-an-men is Westernized from Chinese and is multiple characters, not a single word. Since Chinese characters are words, not letters there are multiple ways to translate them into Western characters. Seldom will any of them cause a Westerner to produce the right sounds. The old Wade-Giles approach produces vastly different Westernizations than the official PRC Pinyin. For example, Mao Tse-tung in Wade Giles becomes Mao ZeDong in Pinyin, or Chou En-lai vs Zhou Enlai. And of course, any one Westernization of a character will actually stand for multiple characters in Chinese and often not a small number. It is interesting that previous Chinese dictionaries were organized by stroke count and/or radical. The PRC started the practice of organizing the dictionary by the pinyin spelling. It apparently produces a finer granularity hash. ;-) There fewer times that 100s of characters end up under the same pinyin spelling convention. But there is really no way to speak of misspellings with Chinese names. Take care, John At 2:44 AM -0500 6/6/13, Larry Sheldon wrote: >The other day I read a posting someplace about the anniversary of >the Tiananmen Square protests. > >While reading the article I mistakenly took something the author >said to mean that he (she) thought the Internet was involved. (I >have since found it briefly and the author said nothing of the sort.) > >I said I thought that the technological enabler in those protests >was the PC-connected printer. > >But now I am worried that I am wrong about that too. I do think I >remember reading that somewhere at the time--but I don't have a >notion now about how they passed data around. Disks? BBSs? > >Any of you folks who actually know have an opinion? > >It is interesting to note that Thunderbird seems to have "Tiananmen" >miss-spelt as "Tienanmen" >-- >Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics > of System Administrators: >Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to > learn from their mistakes. > (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From cos at aaaaa.org Thu Jun 6 10:16:46 2013 From: cos at aaaaa.org (Ofer Inbar) Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2013 13:16:46 -0400 Subject: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square In-Reply-To: <51B03DE1.1060901@cox.net> References: <51B03DE1.1060901@cox.net> Message-ID: <20130606171646.GQ8399@mip.aaaaa.org> Larry Sheldon wrote: > I said I thought that the technological enabler in those protests was > the PC-connected printer. > > But now I am worried that I am wrong about that too. I do think I > remember reading that somewhere at the time--but I don't have a notion > now about how they passed data around. Disks? BBSs? Coming at it from the other direction, you might look at how the Chinese dissidents saw it at the time. If you're interested in spending some time on this question, contact Brandeis University and see if they have proceedings or recordings of a conference held there in the fall of 1989. One of the student leaders of the protest managed to get out of the country because he had already been approved for a visa to study at Brandeis, and he organized this conference shortly after he got to the US. IIRC it was a big magnet event for anyone involved who'd managed to get out of China, and there were likely panels and presentations on the topic of what technology they used or how they communicated, among other things. BTW, Brandeis University didn't even have Internet at the time. The first Internet connection came in January 1990, shortly after. In the fall of 1989 Brandeis was on CSnet and BITNET. -- Cos From amckenzie3 at yahoo.com Thu Jun 6 12:49:43 2013 From: amckenzie3 at yahoo.com (Alex McKenzie) Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2013 12:49:43 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square In-Reply-To: References: <51B03DE1.1060901@cox.net> <20130606171646.GQ8399@mip.aaaaa.org> <1370540809.17968.YahooMailNeo@web142403.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1370548183.14312.YahooMailNeo@web142406.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> ?Ofer Inbar wrote: ??? Coming at it from the other direction, you might look at how the Chinese dissidents saw it at the time.? If you're interested in >spending some time on this question, contact Brandeis University >and see if they have proceedings or recordings of a conference >held there in the fall of 1989. >. >. >. >I have a friend who is a librarian at Brandeis and I have asked her to look into this.? I'll post whatever info I obtain.? I'm posting this to try to avoid a lot of us pinging the people at Brandeis with the same question. > >Cheers, >Alex > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From LarrySheldon at cox.net Thu Jun 6 17:58:03 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 19:58:03 -0500 Subject: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square In-Reply-To: References: <51B03DE1.1060901@cox.net> Message-ID: <51B1301B.9040501@cox.net> On 6/6/2013 4:14 AM, Joly MacFie wrote: > I think consensus is that it was the fax machine.. > > http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,957964,00.html > > http://www.evolutionshift.com/blog/2009/06/03/tiananmen-square-and-technology/ I don't think I have ever heard that before--or had forgotten it if I have. Interesting, and it makes a lot of sense. I'm glad I asked. Thank you. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From LarrySheldon at cox.net Thu Jun 6 18:00:00 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:00:00 -0500 Subject: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square In-Reply-To: References: <51B03DE1.1060901@cox.net> Message-ID: <51B13090.60208@cox.net> On 6/6/2013 5:56 AM, John Day wrote: > Tien-an-men or Tian-an-men is Westernized from Chinese and is multiple > characters, not a single word. Since Chinese characters are words, not > letters there are multiple ways to translate them into Western > characters. Seldom will any of them cause a Westerner to produce the > right sounds. > > The old Wade-Giles approach produces vastly different Westernizations > than the official PRC Pinyin. For example, Mao Tse-tung in Wade Giles > becomes Mao ZeDong in Pinyin, or Chou En-lai vs Zhou Enlai. > > And of course, any one Westernization of a character will actually stand > for multiple characters in Chinese and often not a small number. It is > interesting that previous Chinese dictionaries were organized by stroke > count and/or radical. The PRC started the practice of organizing the > dictionary by the pinyin spelling. It apparently produces a finer > granularity hash. ;-) There fewer times that 100s of characters end up > under the same pinyin spelling convention. > > But there is really no way to speak of misspellings with Chinese names. > > Take care, > John > > > > At 2:44 AM -0500 6/6/13, Larry Sheldon wrote: >> The other day I read a posting someplace about the anniversary of the >> Tiananmen Square protests. >> >> While reading the article I mistakenly took something the author said >> to mean that he (she) thought the Internet was involved. (I have >> since found it briefly and the author said nothing of the sort.) >> >> I said I thought that the technological enabler in those protests was >> the PC-connected printer. >> >> But now I am worried that I am wrong about that too. I do think I >> remember reading that somewhere at the time--but I don't have a notion >> now about how they passed data around. Disks? BBSs? >> >> Any of you folks who actually know have an opinion? >> >> It is interesting to note that Thunderbird seems to have "Tiananmen" >> miss-spelt as "Tienanmen" >> -- >> Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics >> of System Administrators: >> Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to >> learn from their mistakes. >> (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) > > -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From LarrySheldon at cox.net Thu Jun 6 18:04:46 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:04:46 -0500 Subject: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square In-Reply-To: References: <51B03DE1.1060901@cox.net> Message-ID: <51B131AE.5070408@cox.net> Sorry about the content-free (even by my standards). Not clear how that happened. I'm not even sure yet who it went to--I was trying to fix the addressing. On 6/6/2013 5:56 AM, John Day wrote: > Tien-an-men or Tian-an-men is Westernized from Chinese and is > multiple characters, not a single word. Since Chinese characters are > words, not letters there are multiple ways to translate them into > Western characters. Seldom will any of them cause a Westerner to > produce the right sounds. I knew that and should have cut T-bird some slack. > The old Wade-Giles approach produces vastly different Westernizations > than the official PRC Pinyin. For example, Mao Tse-tung in Wade > Giles becomes Mao ZeDong in Pinyin, or Chou En-lai vs Zhou Enlai. Some of that I knew, but forgot I knew it. > And of course, any one Westernization of a character will actually > stand for multiple characters in Chinese and often not a small > number. It is interesting that previous Chinese dictionaries were > organized by stroke count and/or radical. The PRC started the > practice of organizing the dictionary by the pinyin spelling. It > apparently produces a finer granularity hash. ;-) There fewer times > that 100s of characters end up under the same pinyin spelling > convention. > > But there is really no way to speak of misspellings with Chinese > names. It is good to learn or be reminded of what has supposedly been learned. > Take care, John Ask questions of learned and therefor interesting people is a hoot--you never know where you will end up. Thanks. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From LarrySheldon at cox.net Thu Jun 6 18:14:10 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:14:10 -0500 Subject: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square In-Reply-To: <20130606171646.GQ8399@mip.aaaaa.org> References: <51B03DE1.1060901@cox.net> <20130606171646.GQ8399@mip.aaaaa.org> Message-ID: <51B133E2.9070302@cox.net> On 6/6/2013 12:16 PM, Ofer Inbar wrote: > Larry Sheldon wrote: >> I said I thought that the technological enabler in those protests was >> the PC-connected printer. >> >> But now I am worried that I am wrong about that too. I do think I >> remember reading that somewhere at the time--but I don't have a notion >> now about how they passed data around. Disks? BBSs? > > Coming at it from the other direction, you might look at how the > Chinese dissidents saw it at the time. If you're interested in > spending some time on this question, contact Brandeis University > and see if they have proceedings or recordings of a conference > held there in the fall of 1989. One of the student leaders of > the protest managed to get out of the country because he had already > been approved for a visa to study at Brandeis, and he organized this > conference shortly after he got to the US. IIRC it was a big magnet > event for anyone involved who'd managed to get out of China, and > there were likely panels and presentations on the topic of what > technology they used or how they communicated, among other things. Wow. I will look into it--I was interested at the time but was in the process of dumping a near-thirty year career and moving half-way across the continent--from an arm of what had been the world's largest corporation to a small mid-western Jesuit university peopled by Luddites. In any case I did not attend to world politics as I might have and I'd sort of forgotten about what was going on in the late 80's. > BTW, Brandeis University didn't even have Internet at the time. > The first Internet connection came in January 1990, shortly after. > In the fall of 1989 Brandeis was on CSnet and BITNET. We didn't even have that except for a few dial-in-diehards until '91 or '92, I think. Thanks for the info. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From LarrySheldon at cox.net Thu Jun 6 18:18:01 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:18:01 -0500 Subject: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square In-Reply-To: <1370548183.14312.YahooMailNeo@web142406.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <51B03DE1.1060901@cox.net> <20130606171646.GQ8399@mip.aaaaa.org> <1370540809.17968.YahooMailNeo@web142403.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <1370548183.14312.YahooMailNeo@web142406.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51B134C9.5080208@cox.net> On 6/6/2013 2:49 PM, Alex McKenzie wrote: > Ofer Inbar wrote: > > Coming at it from the other direction, you might look at how the > > Chinese dissidents saw it at the time. If you're interested in >> spending some time on this question, contact Brandeis University >> and see if they have proceedings or recordings of a conference held >> there in the fall of 1989. . . . I have a friend who is a librarian >> at Brandeis and I have asked her to look into this. I'll post >> whatever info I obtain. I'm posting this to try to avoid a lot of >> us pinging the people at Brandeis with the same question. >> >> Cheers, Alex I was going to see if I was smart enough to figure out how to do that. I am interested and will await developments. Thanks. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From LarrySheldon at cox.net Thu Jun 6 18:32:58 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:32:58 -0500 Subject: [ih] "email"-- an opportunity. In-Reply-To: <20130605220929.7E20318C09B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> References: <20130605220929.7E20318C09B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Message-ID: <51B1384A.5030003@cox.net> On 6/5/2013 5:09 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: >> From: Larry Sheldon > >> (y'all frightened the post office? that's funny.) > > Why? It was not without reason; check out the stats on first-class > mail volume - it's estimated that it's taken a _huge_ hit from > email. I have always, since before I learned the term, thought Luddites were funny. > On the subject of the term 'email' - I have this vague memory that it > came from outside 'our' community, which would explain why it doesn't > appear in archives. I think we just called it 'mail' or 'network > mail'. > > I have some very old business cards from MIT/etc which give my email > address, and one labels it 'ARPANet Address', another just 'Net'. In the late 1980's I had a bang path address (I've forgotten the beginning of it, maybe) ucbvax!well!car54 (seems like the "ucbvax" was wrapped with a well known site at my employer that I was not supposed to know about--"pttsomething" in curly braces?) But I don't remember what I called it. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From lyndon at orthanc.ca Thu Jun 6 20:00:27 2013 From: lyndon at orthanc.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg) Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2013 20:00:27 -0700 Subject: [ih] "email"-- an opportunity. In-Reply-To: <51B1384A.5030003@cox.net> References: <20130605220929.7E20318C09B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <51B1384A.5030003@cox.net> Message-ID: <2BDFD450-32BF-44EC-B6FD-5BBAAD0285A9@orthanc.ca> On 2013-06-06, at 6:32 PM, Larry Sheldon wrote: > In the late 1980's I had a bang path address (I've forgotten the beginning of it, maybe) ucbvax!well!car54 (seems like the "ucbvax" was wrapped with a well known site at my employer that I was not supposed to know about--"pttsomething" in curly braces?) ihnp4!... -- {alberta,pyramid,uunet,uwvax}!ncc!lyndon From LarrySheldon at cox.net Thu Jun 6 20:18:48 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 22:18:48 -0500 Subject: [ih] "email"-- an opportunity. In-Reply-To: References: <20130605220929.7E20318C09B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <51B1384A.5030003@cox.net> Message-ID: <51B15118.4030201@cox.net> On 6/6/2013 9:18 PM, Vint Cerf wrote: >> In the late 1980's I had a bang path address (I've forgotten the beginning >> of it, maybe) ucbvax!well!car54 (seems like the "ucbvax" was wrapped with >> a well known site at my employer that I was not supposed to know >> about--"pttsomething" in curly braces?) >> >> But I don't remember what I called it. It occurs to me that I probably called it "my bang path". -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From LarrySheldon at cox.net Thu Jun 6 20:20:09 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 22:20:09 -0500 Subject: [ih] "email"-- an opportunity. In-Reply-To: <51B15118.4030201@cox.net> References: <20130605220929.7E20318C09B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <51B1384A.5030003@cox.net> <51B15118.4030201@cox.net> Message-ID: <51B15169.2030901@cox.net> On 6/6/2013 10:18 PM, Larry Sheldon wrote: > On 6/6/2013 9:18 PM, Vint Cerf wrote: > >>> In the late 1980's I had a bang path address (I've forgotten the >>> beginning >>> of it, maybe) ucbvax!well!car54 (seems like the "ucbvax" was wrapped >>> with >>> a well known site at my employer that I was not supposed to know >>> about--"pttsomething" in curly braces?) >>> >>> But I don't remember what I called it. > > It occurs to me that I probably called it "my bang path". Interesting to note that the Wiki page for "bang path" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bang_path#Bang_path speaks only of "mail". > -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From lyndon at orthanc.ca Thu Jun 6 20:53:16 2013 From: lyndon at orthanc.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg) Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2013 20:53:16 -0700 Subject: [ih] "email"-- an opportunity. In-Reply-To: <51B15169.2030901@cox.net> References: <20130605220929.7E20318C09B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <51B1384A.5030003@cox.net> <51B15118.4030201@cox.net> <51B15169.2030901@cox.net> Message-ID: On 2013-06-06, at 8:20 PM, Larry Sheldon wrote: > Interesting to note that the Wiki page for "bang path"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bang_path#Bang_path speaks only of "mail". Once upon a time the Wikipedia page for Ethernet claimed the 1500 byte MTU was due to it taking too long to send longer packets over PPP links. From ian.peter at ianpeter.com Thu Jun 6 21:46:21 2013 From: ian.peter at ianpeter.com (Ian Peter) Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2013 14:46:21 +1000 Subject: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9D9BC80AF6684C2C9FD064EDE484BDC5@Toshiba> I dont think the Internet was involved in Tiananmen Square, but there was an interesting use of telecommunications at the time. The Chinese government set up a "dob in a protestor" hot line for locals to report people protesting. Western students (I think mainly UK and European but may be wrong there )got hold of this number and implemented a quite successful widespread campaign to block the line as long as possible by jamming it with telephone calls (sort of an analog denial of service attack?). For an investment of $1 or so a student could at least feel they had done something. Ian Peter -----Original Message----- From: internet-history-request at postel.org Sent: Friday, June 07, 2013 11:33 AM To: internet-history at postel.org Subject: internet-history Digest, Vol 75, Issue 6 Send internet-history mailing list submissions to internet-history at postel.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to internet-history-request at postel.org You can reach the person managing the list at internet-history-owner at postel.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of internet-history digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: Another history question -- Tiananmen Square (Alex McKenzie) 2. Re: Another history question -- Tiananmen Square (Larry Sheldon) 3. Re: Another history question -- Tiananmen Square (Larry Sheldon) 4. Re: Another history question -- Tiananmen Square (Larry Sheldon) 5. Re: Another history question -- Tiananmen Square (Larry Sheldon) 6. Re: Another history question -- Tiananmen Square (Larry Sheldon) 7. Re: "email"-- an opportunity. (Larry Sheldon) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2013 12:49:43 -0700 (PDT) From: Alex McKenzie Subject: Re: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square To: Internet History Message-ID: <1370548183.14312.YahooMailNeo at web142406.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" ?Ofer Inbar wrote: ??? Coming at it from the other direction, you might look at how the Chinese dissidents saw it at the time.? If you're interested in >spending some time on this question, contact Brandeis University >and see if they have proceedings or recordings of a conference >held there in the fall of 1989. >. >. >. >I have a friend who is a librarian at Brandeis and I have asked her to look >into this.? I'll post whatever info I obtain.? I'm posting this to try to >avoid a lot of us pinging the people at Brandeis with the same question. > >Cheers, >Alex > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/attachments/20130606/d446d7b9/attachment-0001.html ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 19:58:03 -0500 From: Larry Sheldon Subject: Re: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square Cc: "internet-history at postel.org" Message-ID: <51B1301B.9040501 at cox.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed On 6/6/2013 4:14 AM, Joly MacFie wrote: > I think consensus is that it was the fax machine.. > > http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,957964,00.html > > http://www.evolutionshift.com/blog/2009/06/03/tiananmen-square-and-technology/ I don't think I have ever heard that before--or had forgotten it if I have. Interesting, and it makes a lot of sense. I'm glad I asked. Thank you. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) ------------------------------ Message: 3 Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:00:00 -0500 From: Larry Sheldon Subject: Re: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square Cc: "internet-history at postel.org" Message-ID: <51B13090.60208 at cox.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed On 6/6/2013 5:56 AM, John Day wrote: > Tien-an-men or Tian-an-men is Westernized from Chinese and is multiple > characters, not a single word. Since Chinese characters are words, not > letters there are multiple ways to translate them into Western > characters. Seldom will any of them cause a Westerner to produce the > right sounds. > > The old Wade-Giles approach produces vastly different Westernizations > than the official PRC Pinyin. For example, Mao Tse-tung in Wade Giles > becomes Mao ZeDong in Pinyin, or Chou En-lai vs Zhou Enlai. > > And of course, any one Westernization of a character will actually stand > for multiple characters in Chinese and often not a small number. It is > interesting that previous Chinese dictionaries were organized by stroke > count and/or radical. The PRC started the practice of organizing the > dictionary by the pinyin spelling. It apparently produces a finer > granularity hash. ;-) There fewer times that 100s of characters end up > under the same pinyin spelling convention. > > But there is really no way to speak of misspellings with Chinese names. > > Take care, > John > > > > At 2:44 AM -0500 6/6/13, Larry Sheldon wrote: >> The other day I read a posting someplace about the anniversary of the >> Tiananmen Square protests. >> >> While reading the article I mistakenly took something the author said >> to mean that he (she) thought the Internet was involved. (I have >> since found it briefly and the author said nothing of the sort.) >> >> I said I thought that the technological enabler in those protests was >> the PC-connected printer. >> >> But now I am worried that I am wrong about that too. I do think I >> remember reading that somewhere at the time--but I don't have a notion >> now about how they passed data around. Disks? BBSs? >> >> Any of you folks who actually know have an opinion? >> >> It is interesting to note that Thunderbird seems to have "Tiananmen" >> miss-spelt as "Tienanmen" >> -- >> Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics >> of System Administrators: >> Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to >> learn from their mistakes. >> (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) > > -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:04:46 -0500 From: Larry Sheldon Subject: Re: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square Cc: "internet-history at postel.org" Message-ID: <51B131AE.5070408 at cox.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Sorry about the content-free (even by my standards). Not clear how that happened. I'm not even sure yet who it went to--I was trying to fix the addressing. On 6/6/2013 5:56 AM, John Day wrote: > Tien-an-men or Tian-an-men is Westernized from Chinese and is > multiple characters, not a single word. Since Chinese characters are > words, not letters there are multiple ways to translate them into > Western characters. Seldom will any of them cause a Westerner to > produce the right sounds. I knew that and should have cut T-bird some slack. > The old Wade-Giles approach produces vastly different Westernizations > than the official PRC Pinyin. For example, Mao Tse-tung in Wade > Giles becomes Mao ZeDong in Pinyin, or Chou En-lai vs Zhou Enlai. Some of that I knew, but forgot I knew it. > And of course, any one Westernization of a character will actually > stand for multiple characters in Chinese and often not a small > number. It is interesting that previous Chinese dictionaries were > organized by stroke count and/or radical. The PRC started the > practice of organizing the dictionary by the pinyin spelling. It > apparently produces a finer granularity hash. ;-) There fewer times > that 100s of characters end up under the same pinyin spelling > convention. > > But there is really no way to speak of misspellings with Chinese > names. It is good to learn or be reminded of what has supposedly been learned. > Take care, John Ask questions of learned and therefor interesting people is a hoot--you never know where you will end up. Thanks. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) ------------------------------ Message: 5 Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:14:10 -0500 From: Larry Sheldon Subject: Re: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square To: internet-history at postel.org Message-ID: <51B133E2.9070302 at cox.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed On 6/6/2013 12:16 PM, Ofer Inbar wrote: > Larry Sheldon wrote: >> I said I thought that the technological enabler in those protests was >> the PC-connected printer. >> >> But now I am worried that I am wrong about that too. I do think I >> remember reading that somewhere at the time--but I don't have a notion >> now about how they passed data around. Disks? BBSs? > > Coming at it from the other direction, you might look at how the > Chinese dissidents saw it at the time. If you're interested in > spending some time on this question, contact Brandeis University > and see if they have proceedings or recordings of a conference > held there in the fall of 1989. One of the student leaders of > the protest managed to get out of the country because he had already > been approved for a visa to study at Brandeis, and he organized this > conference shortly after he got to the US. IIRC it was a big magnet > event for anyone involved who'd managed to get out of China, and > there were likely panels and presentations on the topic of what > technology they used or how they communicated, among other things. Wow. I will look into it--I was interested at the time but was in the process of dumping a near-thirty year career and moving half-way across the continent--from an arm of what had been the world's largest corporation to a small mid-western Jesuit university peopled by Luddites. In any case I did not attend to world politics as I might have and I'd sort of forgotten about what was going on in the late 80's. > BTW, Brandeis University didn't even have Internet at the time. > The first Internet connection came in January 1990, shortly after. > In the fall of 1989 Brandeis was on CSnet and BITNET. We didn't even have that except for a few dial-in-diehards until '91 or '92, I think. Thanks for the info. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) ------------------------------ Message: 6 Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:18:01 -0500 From: Larry Sheldon Subject: Re: [ih] Another history question -- Tiananmen Square To: internet-history at postel.org Message-ID: <51B134C9.5080208 at cox.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed On 6/6/2013 2:49 PM, Alex McKenzie wrote: > Ofer Inbar wrote: > > Coming at it from the other direction, you might look at how the > > Chinese dissidents saw it at the time. If you're interested in >> spending some time on this question, contact Brandeis University >> and see if they have proceedings or recordings of a conference held >> there in the fall of 1989. . . . I have a friend who is a librarian >> at Brandeis and I have asked her to look into this. I'll post >> whatever info I obtain. I'm posting this to try to avoid a lot of >> us pinging the people at Brandeis with the same question. >> >> Cheers, Alex I was going to see if I was smart enough to figure out how to do that. I am interested and will await developments. Thanks. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) ------------------------------ Message: 7 Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2013 20:32:58 -0500 From: Larry Sheldon Subject: Re: [ih] "email"-- an opportunity. To: "internet-history at postel.org" Message-ID: <51B1384A.5030003 at cox.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed On 6/5/2013 5:09 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote: >> From: Larry Sheldon > >> (y'all frightened the post office? that's funny.) > > Why? It was not without reason; check out the stats on first-class > mail volume - it's estimated that it's taken a _huge_ hit from > email. I have always, since before I learned the term, thought Luddites were funny. > On the subject of the term 'email' - I have this vague memory that it > came from outside 'our' community, which would explain why it doesn't > appear in archives. I think we just called it 'mail' or 'network > mail'. > > I have some very old business cards from MIT/etc which give my email > address, and one labels it 'ARPANet Address', another just 'Net'. In the late 1980's I had a bang path address (I've forgotten the beginning of it, maybe) ucbvax!well!car54 (seems like the "ucbvax" was wrapped with a well known site at my employer that I was not supposed to know about--"pttsomething" in curly braces?) But I don't remember what I called it. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ internet-history mailing list internet-history at postel.org http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history End of internet-history Digest, Vol 75, Issue 6 *********************************************** From winowicki at yahoo.com Fri Jun 7 09:06:02 2013 From: winowicki at yahoo.com (Bill Nowicki) Date: Fri, 7 Jun 2013 09:06:02 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ih] wikipedia In-Reply-To: References: <20130605220929.7E20318C09B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <51B1384A.5030003@cox.net> <51B15118.4030201@cox.net> <51B15169.2030901@cox.net> Message-ID: <1370621162.66903.YahooMailNeo@web125406.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> ? It looks to me like the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bang_path#Bang_path?section of the UUCP article uses both terms somewhat interchangeably. Not surprising, since this was an example of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retronym?effect quite quickly as I recall. We would generally talk about "mail" to mean the computer variety, and "snail mail" to refer to the older post office version sending physical paper. It is taking a bit longer perhaps in the general population. ? I do not recall the claim about Ethernet that you mention. But in general I was so embarrassed about how bad the Wikipedia articles were about computer networking that I did became an editor and tried to fix some over the years.? Feel free to help, since?we are?all volunteers. There is a learning curve, like any new technology and community (since it is both). Many people get discouraged since unless you follow the conventions changes tend to be reverted. I might be able to help by using the right citation format and neutral language etc. if provided sources. Generally Wikipedia suffers from quite a recentism bias: to most editors anything from before 2008 is ancient history! That UUCP article cold use help too, sigh. ? Bill -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From LarrySheldon at cox.net Fri Jun 7 15:28:06 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 17:28:06 -0500 Subject: [ih] wikipedia In-Reply-To: <1370621162.66903.YahooMailNeo@web125406.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> References: <20130605220929.7E20318C09B@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> <51B1384A.5030003@cox.net> <51B15118.4030201@cox.net> <51B15169.2030901@cox.net> <1370621162.66903.YahooMailNeo@web125406.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51B25E76.6000607@cox.net> On 6/7/2013 11:06 AM, Bill Nowicki wrote: > > It looks to me like the > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bang_path#Bang_path section of the UUCP > article uses both terms somewhat interchangeably. Not surprising, > since this was an example of the > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retronym effect quite quickly as I > recall. We would generally talk about "mail" to mean the computer > variety, and "snail mail" to refer to the older post office version > sending physical paper. It is taking a bit longer perhaps in the > general population. I later found a hypertext mention of "email" but that is the only one I saw. > I do not recall the claim about Ethernet that you mention. Some where in my collection here I have a story about a case where email could not be sent farther than some distance. The Ethernet thing actually makes some sense to me sense a PP circuit is almost certain to exceed the 500 meter distance limit. (Or what ever it is if I have remembered wrong.) But in > general I was so embarrassed about how bad the Wikipedia articles > were about computer networking that I did became an editor and tried > to fix some over the years. Feel free to help, since we are all > volunteers. There is a learning curve, like any new technology and > community (since it is both). Many people get discouraged since > unless you follow the conventions changes tend to be reverted. I > might be able to help by using the right citation format and neutral > language etc. if provided sources. Generally Wikipedia suffers from > quite a recentism bias: to most editors anything from before 2008 is > ancient history! That UUCP article cold use help too, sigh. I have thought about trying to edit some of that stuff--but I don't know if I am up to it and I'm not always sure I am better informed. But I do have to say that I read Wiki articles with the same trepidation that I do any source anymore--the Sokal Hoax and the global warming debacle cured me for all time of taking any one source's word for anything. Richard Feynman excepted. The recentism thing is just sad. -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From amckenzie3 at yahoo.com Tue Jun 11 12:03:12 2013 From: amckenzie3 at yahoo.com (Alex McKenzie) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 12:03:12 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [ih] Fw: Another history question -- Tiananmen Square In-Reply-To: References: <51B03DE1.1060901@cox.net> <20130606171646.GQ8399@mip.aaaaa.org> <1370540809.17968.YahooMailNeo@web142403.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <1370977392.81797.YahooMailNeo@web142403.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> I promised I would check with my friend at Brandeis about the Tianamen Square conference and report back.? Here is what I learned ----- Forwarded Message ----- Alex, Our archivist, Maggie McNeely, just got back to me with the following info: "...we have VHS copies of the symposia on campus, including a segment called "The Role of the media; impact of media, information technology and the ethics of conduct." As these are not yet reformatted, they could be viewed in the Archives on VHS but ideally we would send them out for reformatting so that the VHS tapes are not ruined in the process of using them. > >It is also possible that there are articles about the symposia in the student newspaper." > I've asked who'd pay for the reformatting process (no idea what the archive's policy is on that) but haven't heard back quite yet, this just came in this morning.? But she encouraged me to put you in touch directly, so here's her contact info: Maggie McNeely University Archivist Brandeis University MS 045 at 415 South Street Waltham, MA 02454-9110 Phone: 781-736-4686 Fax: 781-736-4719 mmcneely at brandeis.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From LarrySheldon at cox.net Tue Jun 11 13:16:43 2013 From: LarrySheldon at cox.net (Larry Sheldon) Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:16:43 -0500 Subject: [ih] Fw: Another history question -- Tiananmen Square In-Reply-To: <1370977392.81797.YahooMailNeo@web142403.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> References: <51B03DE1.1060901@cox.net> <20130606171646.GQ8399@mip.aaaaa.org> <1370540809.17968.YahooMailNeo@web142403.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> <1370977392.81797.YahooMailNeo@web142403.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <51B785AB.4050700@cox.net> On 6/11/2013 2:03 PM, Alex McKenzie wrote: > I promised I would check with my friend at Brandeis about the > Tianamen Square conference and report back. Here is what I learned Thanks for the info--I'll bet the costs would be beyond my budget's reach--but I could probably get a contribution (after today's $450 trip tot the car hospital has cooled a bit) to a consortium. > ----- Forwarded Message ----- Alex, > > > Our archivist, Maggie McNeely, just got back to me with the following > info: > > > "...we have VHS copies of the symposia on campus, including a segment > called "The Role of the media; impact of media, information > technology and the ethics of conduct." As these are not yet > reformatted, they could be viewed in the Archives on VHS but ideally > we would send them out for reformatting so that the VHS tapes are not > ruined in the process of using them. >> >> It is also possible that there are articles about the symposia in >> the student newspaper." >> > I've asked who'd pay for the reformatting process (no idea what the > archive's policy is on that) but haven't heard back quite yet, this > just came in this morning. But she encouraged me to put you in touch > directly, so here's her contact info: > > Maggie McNeely University Archivist Brandeis University MS 045 at 415 > South Street Waltham, MA 02454-9110 Phone: 781-736-4686 Fax: > 781-736-4719 mmcneely at brandeis.edu > -- Requiescas in pace o email Two identifying characteristics of System Administrators: Ex turpi causa non oritur actio Infallibility, and the ability to learn from their mistakes. (Adapted from Stephen Pinker) From feinler at earthlink.net Sat Jun 22 15:16:20 2013 From: feinler at earthlink.net (Elizabeth Feinler) Date: Sat, 22 Jun 2013 15:16:20 -0700 Subject: [ih] Flaming In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Flaming was a problem for the Network Information Center, as we often were the distributor of messages or keepers of various online lists. We constantly reviewed things before they were sent out to make sure there were no flames or inappropriate words. I used to have a file online called My-old-flames, but alas it got deleted somewhere along the way. If I remember rightly (and I may not), there was a lot of flaming back in the 70s in the discussion leading up to the Telnet protocol and options. One contributor found it almost impossible to criticize someone?s idea without calling the originator of the idea names. This person was young and fairly new to the network, so the older moderator tried to caution him ? first offline, then a couple of times online ? to stop the personal assaults. The warnings came to no avail, and the personal assaults got worse. Finally the moderator in desperation sent out a message to the perpetrator with the subject line, ?Okay, it?s come to this?.? And the message was ?Your mother wears combat boots!? The amusing thing was that the perpetrator was so young that he had never heard the old military saying that implied that one?s mother was essentially a prostitute, and was a major insult. He called me at the NIC to ask me what the message meant! Sigh! I also remember one I sent out to the NIC staff entitled ?Jelly on the keys? which complained bitterly about people eating jelly donuts at the workstations and gunking up the keyboards. In those days we had to share workstations and keyboards. I also let one fly at Dan Lynch one time when there was a paper shortage and I was about to run off the Arpanet Resource Handbook (a 2 inch thick document) Dan managed the SRI computer facility at the time and had failed to anticipate the paper shortage, and so we ran out of paper. Consequently, I couldn?t print the Resource Handbook and had to renege on deadlines. It was one of my better efforts at flaming (for which I later apologized.) Cheers, Jake -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: