[ih] "The First Router" on Jeopardy

[Dave Crocker]

On 11/22/2021 12:50 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> 
> My immediate reaction was "No, you're not!    That's an IMP."


Welcome to the distinction between a popular perception versus a 
professional one.  The former lacks nuance, using very coarse metrics. 
The latter ought to be more refined, and sometimes is.

For the world at large, packet switching is really the defining moment.

For them, the moment is the invention of computer networking, rather 
than the invention of linking networks together.  (That is, assuming 
that are careful enough to avoid confusing Web with Internet...[*])

Sometimes, the error is in the later direction.

Getting even professionals to be careful in talking about email history 
is difficult.  So it is quite common even in highly technical circles 
-- such as a couple of weeks ago for a press release -- for folk to say 
that Ray invented email rather than Ray invented networked email.

d/

[*]  maybe 20 years ago, taking a Spanish course in Spain, with a class 
of much (much) younger folk from all over Europe, the instructor 
prompted some discussion in Spanish by asking us about our backgrounds. 
I chose to say that I worked on the UCLA networking project, in 1972, 
explaining it was the first site on the Internet.  One of the very 
bright, very young students objected vigorously, saying that the 
Internet was invented in 1989.[**]  I smiled and tried to explain the 
difference but she persisted.  The instructor didn't care about the 
answer, as long as everyone was talking in Spanish, but this dragged on. 
  The youngster would not relent.  Finally the instructor intervened, 
say "Look, you weren't born yet and he was there!"

[**] I have heard of a name for it, but there should be one that 
distinguishes errors that require a lot of knowledge to make.  That she 
knew of 1989 in the net's history was impressive.  My first encounter 
with this type of error was while at the University of Delaware, around 
1980, talking to a hotel reservation agent in Toronto. She asked for my 
address and when I said Newark, Delaware, she queried "that's a suburb 
of Philadelphia, isn't it?"  sigh.
-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net