50 yrs. ago today

[Fred Cisin]

> The first inter-computer  communication happened 50 years ago today. L.
> Kleinrock part of that historic moment, said, and I paraphrase here,
> ARPANET was the instrument that was to enable computers to talk to each
> other remotely. He sent ~@~\LO~@~] because the system crashed(how
surprising was
> that!) This was the precursor to the inter-net, moving from the 
intra-net.

On Tue, 29 Oct 2019, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote:
> Tim Berners-Lee says it's the 50th anniversary of the first internet
> packets. I believe him more than pretty much anyone.
> It's also in multiple computer news stories today.
> The historic event was comms between heterogenous computers over a
> standardised protocol (IP, I think).
> Quit splitting hairs, folks.

The first "internet" packet was certainly a significant event.

But, calling it "The first inter-computer communication" is comparable to 
saying that Columbus was the first to think that the world was round and 
discovered America, or that Ford invented the automobile, or that Bill 
Gates invented software or at least operating systems, or that Steve Jobs 
invented computers.

Some may beg to differ, or point out that those are not accurate 
descriptions of the events.

"First"s are usually expanded into things that they aren't, and almost 
always fail to acknowledge those less "famous" who were already doing it.


OK, I claim to be the first to say "first" is a bogus way to describe any 
historical event.  It is how non-historians fail to comprehend historians.

--
Grumpy Ol' Fred     		cisin at xenosoft.com