[ih] Early Internet history

[John Levine]

In article <33D65BF2-E292-4526-9F62-787C7C2854AA at serissa.com> you write:
>Now this does not appear to be packet switching, but rather message switching, although perhaps the telegrams
>were limited in length.
>
>I don’t know how systems like TELEX worked, for telegram routing.  The Wikipedia article suggests it was
>circuit switched, over POTS, but it is not much of an article. It does claim TELEX as the forerunner of email

Telegrams and Telex were not the same thing.  Telegrams were indeed
message switched, originally written by hand, later with torn paper
tape.  There were young women on roller skates carrying messages from
one station to another at Western Union at 60 Hudson St.

Telex was circuit switched teletype.  Telex machines had phone
numbers, so you dialed a call and then either typed your message or
more usually sent a prepared paper tape since you paid by the minute.
The connection was two way so for some kinds of transactions it was
common to negotiate by typing back and forth.

If you are interested in this stuff, the reference is "The Story of
Telecommunications", written by George Oslin in 1992.  Oslin spent
much of his career at Western Union and was 93 when his book was
published, so he was largely writing about stuff he knew directly.
It's long out of print but it's easy to find used copies.

R's,
John