Dumb Terminals

How many of you remember dumb terminals.  That is all they were, just
monitors and a terminal program to access a server. I use them all the
time in the 60s and 70s. We used them to put email on someone else's
terminal. In the really old days that is what e-mail was. Now it is spam
and messaging and mostly nonsense.

I was around when the ARPANet was established also, although from the
history, it depends on who is telling it, the story has been embellished
and altered so it is difficult to separate out the truth from the
myths.

There was SNDMSG and MAILBOX and the first programs were all of them on
punch cards. Most of everything began at the Univesity of PA or at MIT.
My uncle had the first ENIAC at Aberdeen Proving Grounds. The first really
grand computer with tubes was in the inner ring at the Pentagon in the
same hallway as the War Room. I worked in the War Room and had access to
the computer. To see more of what it was like then, go to
http://inyourface.info/bio/

The first real net language that I remember was strictly machine language
and assemblers and compilers but the first really useful compiler program
was UNIX.

* Ray Tomlinson is credited with inventing email in 1972 who worked for
Bolt Beranek and Newman as an ARPANET contractor. In those days, we were
all hackers.

  Hank Roth