Interesting People mailing list archives
Re: Internet still reshaping history
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 10:58:17 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Gordon Peterson <gep2 () terabites com> Date: September 8, 2009 10:03:55 AM EDT To: dave () farber net Subject: Re: [IP] Re: Internet still reshaping historyWhile we're talking about "Internet" (history, what was, and what wasn't) I think that one of the more interesting pieces of computing history I have is an inhouse memo dated November 1, 1977 in which Datapoint Corporation was planning to announce (on December 1, 1977) "INTERNET". [That announcement, by the way, is what I refer to in my sig file on all my outgoing e-mail messages!]
In the end, the company decided instead to call their product "The ARC System", and to avoid calling it a network (although paradoxically they DID call the hardware component "ARCnet"), with the explanation that they felt the public perceived "networks" as something complicated and hard to manage.
The ARC System, although it from the beginning was announced as having the ability to support multiple "conjoint" networks, and used packet network protocols at both the lowest and higher levels, wasn't really intended to do what today's "Internet" has become. What it actually WAS was the world's first commercially available local area network (and the first which mapped shared disk volumes hosted at servers into virtually "online" disk "drives" at client machines, thus making the remote hosting of the data transparent to applications), and which went on to sell well over a billion dollars' worth of equipment for Datapoint.
But I do think it's fascinating to consider how history might have been different if Datapoint had kept the name "Internet" for their product! And it's still the first time that I personally recall seeing the term "Internet" used for a multi-computer, packet-switched data communications product/service.
-- Gordon Peterson II http://personal.terabites.com 1977-2007: Thirty year anniversary of local area networking ------------------------------------------- Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Current thread:
- Re: Internet still reshaping history David Farber (Sep 07)
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- Internet still reshaping history David Farber (Sep 07)
- Internet still reshaping history David Farber (Sep 07)
- Internet still reshaping history David Farber (Sep 07)
- Re: Internet still reshaping history David Farber (Sep 07)
- Re: Internet still reshaping history David Farber (Sep 08)
- Re: Internet still reshaping history David Farber (Sep 08)
- Re: Internet still reshaping history David Farber (Sep 08)
- Internet still reshaping history Dave Farber (Sep 08)
- Internet still reshaping history David Farber (Sep 09)
- Internet still reshaping history Dave Farber (Sep 09)
- Internet still reshaping history Dave Farber (Sep 09)
- Re: Internet still reshaping history David Farber (Sep 10)