[ih] Early use of the "Internet" term (1977)

Thu Jun 13 20:25:34 PDT 2019

Dear Gordon,

thank you so much for your detailed response, I'll follow up on a private
message so I don't get the rest of the list bored with details.

Warm regards from San Antonio
Jorge

On Thu, Jun 13, 2019 at 6:18 PM Gordon Peterson <gep2 at terabites.com> wrote:

> The packet-switching hardware interfaces were originally internally called
> "FRIL" (for "Fast Resource Intercommunication Link") but the name was
> changed before release (to "RIM", or "Resource Interface Module") because
> some in the company thought that earlier name sounded frivolous.
>
> The original name (in the proposal I wrote and showed Jonathan Schmidt in
> mid-summer 1976) for the system was "DISPDOS" ("Dispersed DOS", since
> Datapoint's slogan was "Dispersed Data Processing").  That was the project
> he approved, with "Datacentral" machines (file servers) and "Dataslave"
> machines (applications processors).  A copy of that proposal, by the way
> (along with a lot of other cool historical stuff), is recorded in the Files
> area of the "DatapointComputers" Yahoogroup:
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DatapointComputers
>
> During the development cycle, we went through a total of five different
> names for the system.
>
> I don't remember why the name got changed from DISPDOS to the second name,
> DATANET, (but it made sense as DATAPOINT NETWORK, since we had Datapoint,
> Databus, Datashare, and so forth).
>
> One of Datapoint's big OEM customers at the time was Honeywell Bull (in
> France) and they were selling a big clustered communications
> concentrator/interface called "Datanet", and Datapoint decided we didn't
> want to offend them regarding their prior use of that name.  So we changed
> to the third name for our system, which was "DOSNET".
>
> I don't recall the reasoning for the next name change, but we changed to
> the fourth name (again, made sense as an "Interprocessor Network") ,
> "Internet".  That was the name the system had when David Hovel (the guy who
> made the Datashare changes) and I (for the system stuff) went up to do the
> first out-of-house install, at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City, in
> their international money transfer department, the last half of September
> 1977.
>
> Chase was (very) happy with the system, which (combined with its successes
> in Advanced Product Development, Software Development, Corporate
> Accounting, Marketing, and other Datapoint inhouse departments which were
> using it by then) helped convince Datapoint to go ahead with the
> announcement as planned, at our Stockholders Meeting planned for New York
> on December 1, 1977.
>
> During November, my boss (Jonathan Schmidt) came to me and gave me the
> news that the company had decided...  "Gordon, we're going to have to
> change the name of the product.  If we call it 'Internet', it will _never_
> be successful... because people's perceptions are that 'networks are
> complicated, and hard to manage'".
>
> {I've often wondered what today's INTERNET would have been called,
> instead, if Datapoint had kept the name "Internet").
>
> So therefore, the product name was finally changed to "The ARC System",
> and the total system as the "Attached Resource Computer".  (Odd that the
> hardware component was still named "ARCNET", so the "net" name wasn't all
> that toxic after all...).
>
> FWIW, I've got a lot of historical documents... the Morgan Stanley
> document you're talking about, my copy of the original project proposal
> that Jon approved, the Nov 1 internal document showing the plan for the Dec
> 1 announcement, a copy of the press kit that was handed out on December
> 1st, various press coverage of the announcement, Datapoint product
> catalogs, green sheets for the RIMs, and a bunch more.
>
> I was up in New York for the announcement (although I didn't give any
> presentations or anything, I was just there to observe since it was "my
> baby"...).  I told my colleagues there that "What we're doing here today is
> pushing a very large rock over a very tall cliff... from this day forward,
> the days of the monolithic mainframe as the primary workhorse for business
> data processing are numbered."
>
> "Oh, Gordon," my colleagues told me.  "It's a good system, but you're
> crazy... big businesses will never give up their mainframes and run their
> processing on networks of little computers."
>
> I grinned at them and replied, "You just WATCH!"   :-)
>
> Ah, the memories!!   :-)
>
> Note that I also managed to find copies of numerous Datapoint marketing
> videos from back then... and have uploaded them to Youtube.  The original
> ARC System video (that Datapoint showed at big computer trade shows etc, to
> explain what the purpose of the system and logic behind it was for) is on
> Youtube as "Datapoint ARC System".
>
> Another cool video is uploaded as "Datapoint Integrated Electronic
> Office".  I especially like that one because it shows how my ARC System LAN
> software wrapped its arms around Datapoint's diverse product lines and
> brought them all together as a far more integrated whole, for the first
> time.
>
> By the time the IBM PC came out in 1981 (and it only had RS-232C serial
> communications at 9600 baud, or maybe 19.2kbaud), Datapoint already had
> more than 10,000 ARC System LANs installed worldwide.
>
> Datapoint sold more than a billion dollars' worth of my system.
>
> Another interesting point is that when ARC came out in 1977... ARPANET
> (the forerunner of today's Internet, running on IMPs (the message processor
> interfaces made by BBN (Bolt, Baranek and Newman) and costing, if I
> remember right, something like $50K each) were running at 56Kbits per
> second.  Compared to 2.5Mbits per second for The ARC System.
>
> (...and, at the time, Ethernet.... which wasn't a released product yet...
> was running at just 2 megabits, across the thick-wire linear bus with
> "vampire taps").
>
> Anyhow, I hope some of these fun and historical memories help y'all!!   ;-)
> On 6/13/2019 4:37 PM, Richard Bennett wrote:
>
> This is a question for Gordon Peterson, the chief scientist (or something
> like that) at Datapoint. The company’s LAN was called ARCNet, but that may
> not be the original name.
>
> RB
>
> On Jun 13, 2019, at 1:57 PM, Jorge Amodio <jmamodio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi There,
>
> I've got involved for some time now with the San Antonio Museum of Science
> and Technology, and I'm sort of becoming a Master Curator on a program I'm
> creating to catalog, organize and design several exhibits of vintage
> computers particularly from Datapoint Corporation, earlier known as
> Computer Terminal Corporation, founded in San Antonio, TX in 1968.
>
> There are some interesting stories around CTC & Datapoint, where actually
> one of the first personal computers was designed and manufactured, 10+
> years earlier than the IBM PC.
>
> While working on basic research, I stumbled onto two documents from 1977
> where the INTERNET term was used.
>
> First document is an internal Datapoint Interoffice Memo dated Nov 1,
> 1977. Subject of the document was "INTERNET Press Announcement" and part of
> the text says "INTERNET will be officially announced in conjunction with
> the annual shareholders meeting December 1, 1977 at the Marriott Essex
> House..."
>
> The second document is Morgan Stanley Progress Report for Datapoint
> Corporation (DPT-NYSE) which on part of the text includes "On December 1,
> 1977, we expect the Company will announce a major new system-oriented,
> primarily software-based product, probably dubbed "Internet." As we
> understand it, Internet is a package of system programs which utilizes a
> microprocessor-controlled coaxial cable as a means to tie together the
> individual independent operations of a large number of intelligent
> terminals, file processors, and/or application-dedicated satellite
> processors...."
>
> Does anybody know about it and has any further references ?
>
> If somebody is interested in a copy of the documents I've both scanned on
> pdf format.
>
> Thanks & Regards
> Jorge
>
> _______
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>
>
> —
> Richard Bennett
> High Tech Forum <http://hightechforum.org> Founder
> Ethernet & Wi-Fi standards co-creator
>
> Internet Policy Consultant
>
>
>
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