[ih] A paper

[Jack Haverty]

On 7/18/21 5:17 PM, Darius Kazemi via Internet-history wrote:
> it is interesting to note that the word "protocol"
> literally derives from politics, specifically that of diplomatic protocol!

It may be older than that.   I recall at one of the early Internet 
meetings, circa 1978, Vint explained to all of us that the "Protocol" in 
TCP was descended from the ancient Greek "protokolon", which was the 
name of the short section of writing at the beginning of a scroll of 
papyrus, containing an explanation of what was in the rest of the scroll 
and how it was intended to be used.   So you could find what you wanted 
without unrolling the whole scroll.

So a "protokolon" was essentially a set of rules and information that 
allowed someone to use the contents of a papyrus scroll.   Kind of like 
how a protocol tells us how to use the bits that follow. The word is 
still in some use today - I've seen "protokolon" used in descriptions of 
ancient papyrus unearthed by archaeologists that I've stumbled across.   
But I don't know if it had anything to do with ancient politics.

/Jack