[ih] Comments re the packet radio discussion

[Greg Skinner]

On Apr 22, 2026, at 5:14 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
> FYI to anyone interested, I also recommend the book "The Victorian Internet" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Victorian_Internet ).  I didn't read this until recently, but it is another example discussing an older Internet of the pre-computer times.  The book describes the emergence of Morse Code and the whole system of Telegraphy that developed in the 19th century.  The description of the "social media" that developed among the widely scattered population of operators was interesting too.  When traffic loads were light, operators could easily talk to each other, not just exchanging "routing updates".
> 
> There's a lot of detail included about the impact that the "Victorian Internet" had on society, business, and culture of that era.  IMHO, we're right now going through a similar historical transition with our own Internet and global societies, but the book describing that experience can't be written quite yet.
> 
> I suspect the Egyptians or Greeks might also have an Internet but I didn't have a teacher who was into their history.  The Romans must have learned about Internets from someone.  Maybe the Sumerians....
> 
> Humans have been using Internets, and developing appropriate algorithms and protocols to implement them using the technology of the day, for quite a long time.....
> 
> /Jack Haverty
> 

I recently visited Tom Standage’s blog post about The Victorian Internet <https://tomstandage.wordpress.com/books/the-victorian-internet/> and noticed that he mentioned that Andrew Odlyzko <https://www-users.cse.umn.edu/~odlyzko/> had read it.  Odlyzko’s name also came up in some literature about the origins of Tier 1 ISPs.  He used to post here occasionally.  You might find some of the Internet system level analysis you’re looking for in his papers.

--gregbo