[WEB4LIB] Question for the old timers out there

[Lars Aronsson]

Sloan, Bernie wrote:
> what the technical environment was like circa 1977-1978.
> 
> I'm talking about IBM 360 mainframes. The ARPANET is less than ten years
> old. No public Internet yet.

Some years ago i compiled some events in telecom and computing history
along a timeline, http://aronsson.se/hist.html
I cannot promise that these facts are correct or complete, but it
might give you some ideas.

Already in the 1960s and early 1970s, many universities, especially in
the U.S. Midwest, had timesharing mainframes with e-mail and
conferencing and a social life online.  The only aspect that was
missing was packet switching, the technology behind the Internet of
today (TCP/IP).  When I asked some pioneers at the University of
Michigan why they weren't involved in the early ARPANET, they
indicated this could be because their university didn't accept grants
from the military (in the context of protests against the Vietnam
war).  I think this is an unwritten part of the history of the
Internet.  You could ask around the computing people in Illinois if
they have comments on this.


Lars Aronsson.
-- 
  Aronsson Datateknik