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

Tue Aug 8 13:45:38 PDT 2023

Thanks Geoff!!

On Tue, Aug 8, 2023, 16:43 the keyboard of geoff goodfellow <
geoff at iconia.com> wrote:

> indeed "there another system called Planet in that early era", viz.:
>
> "... In 1971, [Jacques] Vallée left Stanford to join the Engelbart group
> as a senior research engineer. His tenure at ARC coincided with the group's
> immersion in Erhard Seminars Training and other social experiments,
> ultimately prompting his departure. While at the Institute for the Future
> as a senior research fellow from 1972 to 1976, he succeeded Paul Baran as
> principal investigator on the large National Science Foundation project for
> computer networking, which developed one of the first ARPANET conferencing
> systems, Planning Network (PLANET),[2] predating instant messaging by many
> years. The technology was spun off into InfoMedia, a startup company
> founded by Vallée in 1976. Although the firm formed several international
> spinoffs and partnered with a variety of prominent firms and governmental
> organizations (including Lehman Brothers, Renault and NASA), it failed to
> attain long-term profitability...
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Vall%C3%A9e
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 8, 2023 at 1:35 PM Vint Cerf via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> 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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>> > > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> > > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>> > >
>> > --
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>> >
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>
>
> --
> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
> living as The Truth is True
>
>