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

Tue Aug 8 13:50:38 PDT 2023

vint, also recalling there was CONFER from/in That ERA (and WHAT An Era It
WAS! :-)

"CONFER is one of the first computer conferencing systems. Highly
sophisticated for its time, it was developed in 1975 at the University of
Michigan by then graduate student Robert Parnes.[1] The CONFER system
continued to be a widely used communication tool until 1999.[2] CONFER is
the progenitor of the computer conferencing systems Caucus, PicoSpan, and
YAPP.[3]

Origins and history
CONFER was developed in the mid-1970s when University of Michigan
experimental psychology graduate student Bob Parnes attended a seminar
where Professor Merrill M. Flood discussed aspects of electronic mail and
conferencing on group decision making.[4] Flood had a magnetic tape of a
prototype system and approached Parnes about getting it to run on the
Michigan Terminal System (MTS), the university's time-sharing system.
Parnes declined, but offered instead to attempt writing a similar program
for MTS.[5] With encouragement from Fred Goodman and LeVerne Collet at the
School of Education and Karl Zinn at the Center for Research on Learning
and Teaching (CRLT), CONFER was developed.

Because of a graduate teaching assistant strike, Parnes was temporarily
relieved of his teaching duties and had some extra time to devote to his
experimental system, which he called "CONFER".[5] MTS served as an
excellent development environment for CONFER, which was built on top of the
MTS file structure and exploited its file sharing features. According to
Parnes, "I don't think I could have written CONFER anywhere but on MTS."
MTS at U-M and later at Wayne State University (WSU) was a good match for
CONFER because both systems were attached to the Merit Network and thus had
a broader reach within Michigan via Merit and within the U.S. and
internationally via Merit's interconnections to Telenet (later SprintNet),
Tymnet, ADP's Autonet, and later still the IBM Global Network and the
Internet.

Parnes' vision of the system was one where the individual group participant
would alternate between being a producer and being a consumer of
information. The unique CONFER feature in this regard was initially the
functionality of the "vote." This feature allowed the consumer to voice
their "feelings" or opinion on a statement by voting.

Parnes went on to form his own company — Advertel Communication Systems,
Inc. — which marketed and supported CONFER.[5]

The CONFER system continued to be a widely used communication tool until
1999. By this time, U-M, WSU, and the University of Alberta had moved from
the Michigan Terminal System to distributed computing environments and
several newer digital technologies replaced the functionality provided by
CONFER.[2]

Sites where CONFER was used...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CONFER_(software)

On Tue, Aug 8, 2023 at 1:42 PM 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
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > --
>> > > Internet-history mailing list
>> > > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> > > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>> > >
>> > --
>> > Internet-history mailing list
>> > Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> > https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>> >
>> --
>> Internet-history mailing list
>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>
>
>
> --
> Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
> living as The Truth is True
>
>

-- 
Geoff.Goodfellow at iconia.com
living as The Truth is True