Re: NSF and the Birth of the Internet

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Randall Webmail <rvh40 () insightbb com>
Date: August 19, 2008 5:27:27 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: mo () ccr org
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:     NSF and the Birth of the Internet

> From: "Michael O'Dell" <mo () ccr org>
> Date: August 19, 2008 1:27:36 PM EDT
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: Re: [IP] Re:      NSF and the
> Birth of the Internet
>
> crucial to the explosion of the Web was the
> revolution in PC graphics cards.
>
> when Gopher first hit, I thought it was gonna be the
> Internet's answer to MINITEL and be explosively successful.
> I could play with HTTP but only because I had a Sun workstation
> on my desk and some expensive color displays in the terminal
> room at Bellcore.  The only thing that worked over dialup
> modems on my Toshiba T1200 was Gopher because all it needed
> was an ascii terminal emulator running on a Black&White
> character-based display.
>
> that was the technology which was already pervasive out there -
> the installed base - and that was in the best position to
> exploit
> Gopher.
>
> However, not long after that, this VGA graphics thing appeared
> and while for the first year buying one caused serious pain,
> they started dropping in price, the VESA bus slot appeared on
> cheap motherboards, and the world changed, or it was about to.

First off - thank you, Dave, for bringing this bit of net.history out  
where Brewster's Archive can save it for posterity.  Secondly, I speak  
not as one of those who "made it happen" but as one who was watching  
it all go down, and I'm writing to you, Michael, to mention the "JPEG  
Wars" that broke out on the Usenet alt.binaries.feelthy-peectures  
groups.

People with high-end (at the time expensive) video cards posted pr0n  
using JPEGs, which took FOREVER to render on older cards.

Ah, memories ...





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