[ih] History of "accounts"
Elizabeth Feinler
feinler at earthlink.net
Sun Feb 9 15:36:07 PST 2014
I can speak only as a user, but going back to the mid-60s it seems that there were 4 basic components of "account":
- Cost
- Resource access
- Machine capacity
- Access authorization
And these changed considerably over time.
I used some big information services (such as Dialog and OCLC search services) back in the mid-60s, that could run up bills of hundreds, sometimes thousands; so cost was very important. One often had to pay long distance telephone costs as well as computer use costs and have accounts for both. These particular accounts were billed to us by the information services and were administered internally by our library. The library usually charged costs back to internal projects or individual users. I also used accounts on commercial time-shared machines, such as those at GE and Tymshare. On these machines we generally bought a "pie slice" of the machine based on both resources used and number of user accounts allowed. Within our organization (SRI not-for-profit research org. doing govt. projects), any of these account costs were carefully monitored and charged back to the correct project and/or overhead, so there was a whole SRI internal accounting system involved as well.
Originally the Arpanet, and many early commercial networks provided remote access to important resources such as big research computers, airline reservation systems, information search services, etc. Resource access is very important today, but is paid for differently than it was when the machines were very expensive, small in capacity, and scarce.
Researchers were not charged individually by DARPA to use the Arpanet, as DARPA paid for the network expenses and even provided several network host computers. Even telephone access was covered by the govt. thru the TIPs and TACs. However, some sites still maintained an internal accounting system for host usage, because their hosts did not belong to DARPA and costs were assigned accordingly, Arpanet research being just one such cost. Most computers maintained an internal accounting system of who was using what, whether the sites billed for usage or not.
Our machine at the NIC, first a DEC-10, then DEC-20 could support roughly 75-100 logins before it went to its knees, so machine capacity was very important. How much of the machine resources any given user was using impacted other users, so there were different ways of slicing and dicing the capacity using accounts.
As the Arpanet morphed into the Defense Data Network, the network became an operational military network of which the Arpanet was only one segment (1983). By then there were many other military and government agencies using the DDN for day-to-day work. At that time legitimate access became a concern, and machine capacity and costs were much less of an issue, However, the network itself was expanding rapidly, and there was concern about who was paying for, and who was using the network, so accounts became an issue of authorization. Had someone official approved access for any given user? And was each agency paying its fair share of network expenses?. At that time (mid to late 80s) The NIC and BBN jointly developed an audit trail and billing system for DCA that was capable of billing and accounting down to the individual user, although to the best of my knowledge it never went that far. The still govt-owned network was billed to, and paid for, by the various network sponsors. At first sponsors were all billed an equal share of expenses, but once it was obvious that some agencies used a lot more network resources than others, the audit trail and billing system was authorized, and agencies were billed for their actual usage.
When the Internet became a commercial network (about 1990), the concept of an "account" changed drastically, and is dependent upon what one wants to sell or use and how it is supported financially. Many things on the Internet appear to be "free" because they are supported by advertising, and the concept of an "account" is to prove to the advertiser how many users are being exposed to their products.
On Feb 9, 2014, at 12:00 PM, internet-history-request at postel.org wrote:
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> 1. Re: Fwd: History of "accounts" (Jacob Goense)
> 2. Re: Fwd: History of "accounts" (John Levine)
> 3. Re: Fwd: History of "accounts" (Brian E Carpenter)
> 4. Re: Fwd: History of "accounts" (John R. Levine)
> 5. Re: Fwd: History of "accounts" (Miles Fidelman)
> 6. Old IBM manauls (Larry Press)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 8 Feb 2014 23:15:04 +0100
> From: "Jacob Goense" <dugo at xs4all.nl>
> Subject: Re: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
> To: internet-history at postel.org
> Message-ID:
> <a718b9e29d8ac38e2ad12cb77e6b66aa.squirrel at webmail.xs4all.nl>
> Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
>
> Sure, this old RAND paper tells the story how they went from punching
> clocks for
> time on the IBM 701 to automated accounting on the IBM 704 at GM around 1957.
>
> http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2008/P7316.pdf
>
> Items 2 and 6 on pages 9 and 10 for those in a hurry.
>
> /Jacob
>
>> Anyone here want to give Michele further pointers?
>>
>> j
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Fred Fuchs <fred at firesabre.com>
>> Date: Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 10:06 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Air-L] History of "accounts"
>> To: Michelle Forelle <mcforelle at gmail.com>, AoIR-L
>> <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
>>
>>
>> On 2/7/2014 7:51 PM, Michelle Forelle wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I'm working on a project which requires me to look into the history of
>>> the
>>> concept of "accounts," as in bank accounts or social media accounts.
>>>
>>
>> "Accounts" in computing began in the days of batch processing and
>> timesharing. Here are some related links:
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing
>> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/timesharing/timesharing.html
>> http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Time-sharing.html
>> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=880740
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q07PhW5sCEk
>> http://www.bobbemer.com/TIMESHAR.HTM
>>
>> Here's a bit more on banking too:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking
>> http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/banking/
>> swiss-bank-account2.htm
>> http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0801059.html
>>
>> Good luck,
>>
>> Fred
>>
>> --
>> Fred Fuchs - Founder, CEO, & Producer
>> FireSabre Consulting LLC
>> Content Services for Virtual Worlds
>> Creation, Events, Training, & Simulations
>> www.linkedin.com/in/fredfuchs
>> https://twitter.com/Fred_Fuchs
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: 9 Feb 2014 03:42:56 -0000
> From: "John Levine" <johnl at iecc.com>
> Subject: Re: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
> To: internet-history at postel.org
> Message-ID: <20140209034256.28193.qmail at joyce.lan>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>
> In article <52F63293.3030903 at channelisles.net> you write:
>> Following on from this, the use of "account" in the context of computers
>> relates to timesharing.
>
> It's much older than that. When I was using an OS/360 batch system in
> the mid 1960s, the first card in each job had to identify an account
> so they knew who to charge it to.
>
> Poking around on bitsavers, I see that IBSYS could call an accounting
> routine to handle whatever was on the $JOB card, so I expect most
> shops had provision to charge jobs to various accounts. Back in ye
> olden 1950s before batch processing, I gather that computers were
> typically scheduled by assigning blocks of time to various activities,
> and I expect that they often manually assigned the activites to
> accounts.
>
> R's,
> John
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 17:41:43 +1300
> From: Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
> To: John Levine <johnl at iecc.com>
> Cc: internet-history at postel.org
> Message-ID: <52F70707.1080204 at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> On 09/02/2014 16:42, John Levine wrote:
>> In article <52F63293.3030903 at channelisles.net> you write:
>>> Following on from this, the use of "account" in the context of computers
>>> relates to timesharing.
>>
>> It's much older than that. When I was using an OS/360 batch system in
>> the mid 1960s, the first card in each job had to identify an account
>> so they knew who to charge it to.
>
> It looks as if the first citation for IBSYS/IBJOB is Noble, A.S, Design of an
> integrated programming and operating system, IBM Systems Journal 2(2), 1963.
> That's behind the IEEE paywall. But that publication date would make it
> contemporary with CTSS.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBSYS
>
> Brian
>
>
>>
>> Poking around on bitsavers, I see that IBSYS could call an accounting
>> routine to handle whatever was on the $JOB card, so I expect most
>> shops had provision to charge jobs to various accounts. Back in ye
>> olden 1950s before batch processing, I gather that computers were
>> typically scheduled by assigning blocks of time to various activities,
>> and I expect that they often manually assigned the activites to
>> accounts.
>>
>> R's,
>> John
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: 9 Feb 2014 00:00:38 -0500
> From: "John R. Levine" <johnl at iecc.com>
> Subject: Re: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
> To: "Brian E Carpenter" <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com>
> Cc: internet-history at postel.org
> Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1402082342460.28378 at joyce.lan>
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
>
>>> It's much older than that. When I was using an OS/360 batch system in
>>> the mid 1960s, the first card in each job had to identify an account
>>> so they knew who to charge it to.
>>
>> It looks as if the first citation for IBSYS/IBJOB is Noble, A.S, Design of an
>> integrated programming and operating system, IBM Systems Journal 2(2), 1963.
>> That's behind the IEEE paywall. But that publication date would make it
>> contemporary with CTSS.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBSYS
>
> IBSYS happened to be the immediate predecessor to OS. Here's the manual
> for the slightly earlier Fortran Monitor System in 1961:
>
> http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102663112
>
> On page 64 it says:
>
> The first record of the Monitor is the "Sign-On" record. This
> may be programmed by the installation to handle accounting or
> other identifying information pertaining to a job.
>
> I expect that if we poked around more, we'd find more, earlier stuff. In
> the 1950s computers were phenomenally expensive, and I find it hard to
> believe many of them were run without provision to charge back the costs
> to the users. Unless there is some arcane kind of bookkeeping I never
> heard of, the way you do that is with accounts, maybe done in software, or
> more likely done with pen and paper.
>
> Regards,
> John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
> Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Sun, 09 Feb 2014 07:54:41 -0500
> From: Miles Fidelman <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>
> Subject: Re: [ih] Fwd: History of "accounts"
> Cc: internet-history at postel.org
> Message-ID: <52F77A91.5090107 at meetinghouse.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Older than that. Just found a list of instructions for the IBM 1401
> that includes:
>
> Modifiers for five-character Branch on Indicator (B) instruction:
>
> 1419 valid account-number field
>
>
>
> John R. Levine wrote:
>>>> It's much older than that. When I was using an OS/360 batch system in
>>>> the mid 1960s, the first card in each job had to identify an account
>>>> so they knew who to charge it to.
>>>
>>> It looks as if the first citation for IBSYS/IBJOB is Noble, A.S,
>>> Design of an
>>> integrated programming and operating system, IBM Systems Journal
>>> 2(2), 1963.
>>> That's behind the IEEE paywall. But that publication date would make it
>>> contemporary with CTSS.
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBSYS
>>
>> IBSYS happened to be the immediate predecessor to OS. Here's the
>> manual for the slightly earlier Fortran Monitor System in 1961:
>>
>> http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102663112
>>
>> On page 64 it says:
>>
>> The first record of the Monitor is the "Sign-On" record. This
>> may be programmed by the installation to handle accounting or
>> other identifying information pertaining to a job.
>>
>> I expect that if we poked around more, we'd find more, earlier stuff.
>> In the 1950s computers were phenomenally expensive, and I find it hard
>> to believe many of them were run without provision to charge back the
>> costs to the users. Unless there is some arcane kind of bookkeeping I
>> never heard of, the way you do that is with accounts, maybe done in
>> software, or more likely done with pen and paper.
>>
>> Regards,
>> John Levine, johnl at iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for
>> Dummies",
>> Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. http://jl.ly
>
>
> --
> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
> In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2014 07:16:33 -0800
> From: Larry Press <lpress at csudh.edu>
> Subject: [ih] Old IBM manauls
> To: internet-history at postel.org
> Message-ID: <52F79BD1.4010200 at csudh.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"; format=flowed
>
> In looking for the first mention of an account, we have seen quotes from
> IBM manuals on IBSYS, FMS and the 1401 -- that takes me back!
>
> Is there a repository of old IBM manuals (online or offline)? Could the
> readers of this list collectively create one?
>
> Note that unit record machine manuals are also of interest -- I'd love
> to see a copy of one they had on functional components of unit record
> machines. (Does anyone have old unit record manuals)?
>
> Larry
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
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