Message: 1
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 13:13:23 -0700 (PDT)
From: Texx
Subject: [inforoots] ARPA-UCLA happy 35th
To: inforoots@computerhistory.org
This morning on NPR they blundered and called today the 35th anniversary of the net.
The REAL story:
Sept 1 IMP#1 at UCLA was turned on.
It had arrived a few days before and didnt fit through the door, so it went up on a forklift and they cut a hole in the side of the building.
When the crate left BBN in Mass, som wag scrawled on the side " Do it to Truett ". Truett was the guy who went out to the airport to meet the crate as it came off the freight aircraft.
Oct 1 IMP#2 was turned on and now they had an actual net
(1 node a net does not make)
#2 was Stanford and it was connected to either a Sigma 5 or a 7, I forgot which.
Originally each IMP had a standard wallphone attached to the side to allow an operator to talk to the nexr IMP up thhe line.
Testing the now 2 node net (a REAL net NOW!) te operators were on the phone with each other.
"Im gonna send you a 'H'"
(To the spectators) "Hes gonna send us an 'H'"
"We got the 'H'"
(To the spectators) "They got the 'H'"
cheers on both sides
"Im gonna send you a 'E'"
(To the spectators) "Hes gonna send us an 'E'"
"We got the 'E'"
(To the spectators) "They got the 'E'"
cheers on both sides
"Im gonna send you a 'L'"
(To the spectators) "Hes gonna send us an 'L'"
"When are you gonna send use the 'L' ? "
"I just sent it"
"We didnt get it"
(To the spectators) "They didnt get the 'L'"
groans on both sides
The IMP has crshed.
On Nov 1 of that year UC santa Barbara was turned on. (Kinda apropriate since the UCSB campus was built on the site of a small US NAVY base (USNS GOLETA ?) that was surpus and given to the state of CA
at the end of WW2)
University of Utah followed on 1 Dec.
They took a "breather" and turned on node #5 March 1 the following year (1970)
Isnt it COOL? Now we have SPAM !
(Texx)
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Inforoots is an e-mail list for discussion among its subscribers about the history and stories of the Information Age. Sponsored by the Computer History Museum in Mountain View California, this list was created to let people around the globe share and chronicle the origin, artifacts and stories of the Information Age. Image taken from An Atlas of Cyberspaces, Historical Maps of Computer Networks : The first node on ARPANET at University California Los Angeles (UCLA) on the 2nd of September 1969. (Source : "Casting the Net", page 55)
