[ih] Nit-picking an origin story

[touch at strayalpha.com]

> On Aug 16, 2025, at 5:15 PM, Dave Crocker via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> the scope of my original query was meant to be about much closer -- and possibly competitive or complementary -- milestones: automated, shared (wide-area) digital communications.
> 
> So, for example, telegraph signal/smoke fires, heliography and the like play into the larger... picture.

I included a history when I taught intro to networking.

Couriers			Spoken/written language (30,000 BC)
Pigeons			2900 BC, Egypt
Beacons			1200 BC, Troy
Calling posts		400 BC, Persia
Heliographs		400 BC, Greece
Flags			400 BC, Greece
Hooke semaphore	1680s (shutters and symbols)
Chappe’s telegraph	1790s (arms) with time sync, collision management, priority flow control, and error recovery
Edelcrantz		1790s (just shutters, inspired by Chappe)
Cooke/Wheatstone	1830s magnetic needles
Morse			1830s electromagnetic relays
Morse 			1850s teleprinter (like a stock ticker)
Bell				1870s phone
Marconi			1890s RF
Tube amps		1900s
Transistor		1950s
Laser			1950s
Satellite			1960s

As you note, the adjectives are the key, as with most superlatives.

For "computer networking", I would say Sage is the first in the 1950s, with SABRE (reportedly inspired by SAGE) and telephone switches (arguably remote machine-machine) not far behind in the early 1960s, all AFAICT predating ARPAnet.

Joe