The Internet, circa 1934

[LizzieMaine]

Or, There Is Nothing New Under The Sun.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/17/technology/WEB.php

 

[Rittmeister]

I never knew about this. THanks for posting it. By the way, check out the movie "Brazil" and "Things to Come" for visions of how the 1930's might have foreseen and did foresee the future and computers.

 

[ScionPI2005]

I never knew about this. THanks for posting it. By the way, check out the movie "Brazil" and "Things to Come" for visions of how the 1930's might have foreseen and did foresee the future and computers.

I have to agree with "Brazil". That's one of my favorite movies, and is well written. I have yet to see "Things to Come" however.

Very fascinating article. Thanks for posting it.

 

[Atterbury Dodd]

Really amazing! Makes you wonder how many ideas are actually new.

 

[Forgotten Man]

New ideas? Bah, nonsense!

Very little today are "New Ideas"... most things we enjoy hark back to an earlier time... in fact, famous (and beautiful) actress Heddy Lamarr also co-invented an early form of spread spectrum encoding, a key to modern wireless communication.

That link is very interesting... Thanks for sharing!

 

[ShoreRoadLady]

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us." - Ecclesiastes 1:9,10

Fascinating link.

 

[Bourbon Guy]

Reminds me of a play from early 60's, "David and Lisa," in which David, a mentally disturbed individual, wished for watches that were controlled by radio from a central location so that everyone always has the exactly correct time. They thought he was nuts.

http://www.atomicwatches.com/

30 bucks.

 

[dr greg]

amazing guy

Very intersting stuff, I suppose he'll go on the list of lost opportunities with Tesla

 

[shortbow]

Neat story and an absolutely great job of feature writing. Almost renews one's hope for the future of print reportage.

 

[Feraud]

A fascinating read. It is interesting to learn about the foundations our current technologies are based on.

While he very likely would have been flummoxed by the anything-goes environment of Facebook or MySpace, Otlet saw some of the more productive aspects of social networking: the ability to trade messages, participate in discussions and work together to collect and organize documents.

True. He might have appreciated message boards like this.

 

[Fletch]

The internet, of course, was at first run by the military. The U.S. Army devised the scheme in 1934 after losing too many pilots and planes flying the air mail.

Given that we were not at war at the time and the military budget was extremely tight, the Army was assigned to open its communication channels to civilian use in exchange for an extra crust of funding.

Initially the 'net consisted of wire and radio telegraphy, along with semaphore thru some of the sparsely populated mountain states. There was also a series of tubes, the originals being pneumatic and deployed in the Old State and War Dep't Bld'g in Washington.

Private citizens could post to the net via amateur radio. You visited your neighborhood ham and filled out a message card from the Usenet Radio Relay League (URRL), put a penny stamp on and waited for an answer.

Large data files were sent in packets, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.

The lack of suitable terminal displays in the pre-CRT era doomed the project to failure. Some experiments were tried with mechanical TV systems that could show moving bands of text, smileys, and crude low-definition reproductions of saucy French postcards. However, bulletin boards at the time had to be displayed on actual bulletin boards.

lol

 

[InspectorMorse]

Great link- very interesting!