[ih] Larry Roberts & RD the first electronic mail manager software [was written in TECO on TENEX]

[Vint Cerf]

Wasn't there another system called Planet in that early era?
V

On Tue, Aug 8, 2023, 16:31 Steve Crocker via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> There were multiple conferencing system efforts in those early years.  BBN
> built one that included video.  I moved to ISI in 1974.  The BBN system was
> built a bit later; I don't remember the exact date.  I do remember sitting
> in a swivel chair, spinning it around, and then watching myself complete
> the swivel, so the latency was definitely noticeable.
>
> The Institute for the Future (IFF) developed a conferencing system called
> Forum.  It was essentially identical to IRC, except it required everyone to
> be logged into the same machine.  A user's input was considered to be a
> paragraph.  Even if the user was working at a character-at-a-time terminal,
> which most of us were, output would be suppressed until the paragraph of
> input was complete.  At that point, any paragraphs from others that had
> been queued up were then printed.  If you tried to type new input, you
> would not see the echoed characters until all the queued up paragraphs had
> spewed out.
>
> This was a remarkably effective and usable system.  I have a vivid memory
> of using it to interview a candidate to replace Larry Roberts as head of
> IPTO.  On a Sunday afternoon, six of us participated: The candidate, Larry
> Roberts, Steve Lukasik, Alex Tachmindji, Bob Kahn, me.  Tachmindji was
> Lukasik's deputy.  Bob and I were program managers under Larry.  All of us
> except the candidate were based in the DC area.  Some of us were at home;
> others were in the office.  The candidate was at home in another part of
> the country,elsewhere, working in his den.
>
> I was the most junior person on the call, so I said little but listened a
> lot.  Also, Tachmindji had had the least experience with these tools, and I
> provided some help to him via a side chat.
>
> I noticed there were sometimes two or even three distinct threads in
> progress.  It was not only fairly easy to follow them, it was actually more
> interesting than if we had all been in the same room.  We didn't have to
> wait for each person to finish talking, so it seemed more efficient than a
> regular face to face meeting.
>
> I've often wondered why this mode of interaction is used more frequently.
> I've even tried it out when I had control of the group, but the results
> weren't great.
>
> Larry left DARPA in late 1973 or perhaps very early 1974, so that pins down
> the date moderately well.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Steve
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 8, 2023 at 3:56 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
> > Just a few years ago, I stumbled across an Annual Report that MIT
> > submitted for one year's work in the early 70s.  Since I was there at
> > the time, I was curious how history recorded what we were doing then.
> > Looking at the section for our group, I found a description of a
> > revolutionary implementation of a teleconferencing system that allowed
> > people to interact in real time using the ARPANET which had been
> > completed that year.
> >
> > I didn't remember that we had built any teleconferencing system. Of
> > course with age comes memory loss.  But I remember lots of stuff we did
> > then, but not a "teleconferencing system".   A sign of encroaching
> > dementia...?
> >
> > With further investigation...
> >
> > A bunch of us at MIT in Licklider's group spent a lot of hours getting
> > multi-player MazeWar running on our fancy new Imlac minicomputers.
> > Someone added a feature where players could trash-talk each other with a
> > shared screen space trying to lure them into an ambush or gloat on
> > another kill.   MazeWars of course had nothing to do with whatever
> > research we were doing.   Gettings MazeWar going was just a lot of fun.
> > We all thought MazeWars was just a cool hack and extremely addictive
> > game.   If curious, see
> > https://www.digibarn.com/collections/games/xerox-maze-war/index.html
> >
> > But the experience did reveal, to me at least, the importance of
> > latency, and the difficulties of getting a bunch of computers to
> > interact over a network.   Imlacs had no I/O except RS232.  So, our
> > "LAN" was a star-shaped configuration with Imlac minicomputers connected
> > via RS232 to our PDP-10 as the center of the star (7 floors away), and I
> > had goosed the RS232 hardware well beyond its spec to achieve almost 100
> > kb/sec.  I tried to convince BBN to upgrade the TIP hardware to support
> > higher speed "terminals", but was rebuffed -- "The TIP supports
> > terminals up to the maximum reasonable speed of 9600 bits/second."
> >
> > MIT's Annual Report touted Maze as a "teleconferencing system".
> >
> > Jack
> >
> >
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