[ih] "The First Router" on Jeopardy

[vinton cerf]

interestingly 1989 is the arrival of commercial internet (uunet, psinet,
cerfnet).

v


On Mon, Nov 22, 2021 at 4:14 PM Dave Crocker via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> 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
> --
> Internet-history mailing list
> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>