[Boatanchors] Re: Internet was : eBay item 6506630347 (Ends Jan-26-05115704PST)-JAPANESE MILITARY RADIOS PAR

[John J. McDonough]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Sanders K0AZ" <k0az at corpranet.net>
Subject: RE: [Boatanchors] eBay item 6506630347 (Ends 
Jan-26-05115704PST)-JAPANESE MILITARY RADIOS PAR


> Once again. On the original internet we had nothing but communications
> keyboards in
> use (All Caps). Mostly in use were various models of teletype machines.

This comment has been bugging me.  In finally did a little digging and this 
is what I found ...

Much of the early interest in the Internet was among DEC/Unix types.  Their 
most popular terminal back in the days was the Decwriter LA-36, which was 
introduced in 1974 and supported upper and lower case.  To tell the truth, I 
think the mainframe types had lower case in communications much earlier, but 
lower case was not used among mainframe types until very late, probably a 
cultural thing between mainframers and Deccies.

The date Al Gore started the Internet is a little vague, but it certainly 
wasn't before 1974.  The first concept was floated in 1973, TCP/IP wasn't 
proposed until 1978, and wasn't actually used until 1983.  The IETF, the 
body responsible for the Internet standards, was formed in 1986.

Some would probably argue that the ARPANET was really the Internet, and it 
started back in 1969.  But the ARPANET wasn't at all like the Internet, 
whose real "essence" is the idea of interconnecting networks, rather than 
computers, and having a standards body that ensured all those networks could 
actually communicate.  Besides, BITNET, TIMENET, Telenet and several others 
all added ideas to what eventually became the Internet.

I would suggest that it was really the formation of IETF that "created" the 
Internet, although I could accept that the introduction to the wild of IP in 
1983 marked the beginning.  But four computers wired together at great 
expense certainly doesn't represent the Internet, and that's what ARPANET 
was.

In any case, the upper/lower case terminal was widespread at least 9 years 
before the "Internet", although hobbyists, like myself, certainly used 
teletypes long after that.  But our upper-case ramblings were certainly 
viewed as boorish by the "real" users in the universities and government.

72/73 de WB8RCR    http://www.qsl.net/wb8rcr
didileydadidah     QRP-L #1446 Code Warriors #35