50 yrs. ago today

[Paul Koning]

> On Oct 30, 2019, at 11:20 AM, allison via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> 
> ...
>> But it's not germane. We're not talking about corporate proprietary
>> stuff, or we shouldn't be.
> 
> We should as they were existent and ideas grew from them and for periods
> even depended on them.  As a result a more open set of specifications
> emerged.  That was a contrast to the Telcos(PTT) and private companies.

Note that there's closed, open, and standard.  Closed as in "one company, others can't do this", open as in "defined by a company but anyone can implement this" (DECnet is an example) and standard (TCP/IP, OSI, Ethernet -- things agreed to by groups of separate and possibly competing organizations).

About PTT/Telcos, two historic tidbits.  In the 1980s DEC paid a contractor to string up private fiber between DEC buildings in New England, for use by its internal DECnet network (originally "the Engineering net").  It also built a number of satellite ground stations, for example in Littleton and Nashua.  Unfortunately, I wasn't alert enough to ask if I could have one of those dishes when they were dismantled.

In some countries, at least in the early 1980s (Sweden?) the law said that private organizations could run communication wires on a floor of a building, but to wire from one floor to another was the monopoly of the government PTT.  So DEC Ethernet bridges had PTT approval stickers on them from those countries, indicating those PTTs would be willing to build you a bridged Ethernet from floor 1 to floor 2.

> To think, it all grew from people on hills with flags, mirrors, or
> fires trying to send messages faster and further than physical means
> like runners and horses.
> 
> Allison

One might dust off Samuel Morse's comment: "What hath God wrought".

	paul