[ih] "The First Router" on Jeopardy

[Dan Lynch]

And all of them were at Interop 89 in SanJose.  Now that’s commercial!

Dan

Cell 650-776-7313

> On Nov 22, 2021, at 1:36 PM, vinton cerf via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> 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
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>> 
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