[ih] Nit-picking an origin story

[the keyboard of geoff goodfellow]

yours truly's fav:

Pneumatic (tube) transportation ~1799
William Murdoch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube


On Sat, Aug 16, 2025 at 5:40 PM touch--- via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

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