Re: Internet still reshaping history

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

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 history

While 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




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