Klaus, I'm in general agreement with your historical recap below - I believe that the first transaction was most likely a bill of lading between the various transportation modes. And of course, we all know that it was Ed Guilbert that was actually the father of EDI as we know it today as a result of his role in the Berlin Airlift and further work in the U.S. DOT. My copy of the EDI Forum Founding Issue has several articles written by Joe Carley, Ralph Notto, Buddy Bass, among others sheds light on this question In Buddy Bass' (Earl J. Bass) article about John Nelsen he indicates that it was Conrail and the Missouri Pacific railroads that provided the first ever demonstration of the TDCC EDI standards when they exchanged the Waybill Data Exchange transaction between them in 1978. Dr. Margaret Emmelhainz in her book states that TDCC published its first standards in 1975. Rachel Rachel Foerster & Associates Ltd 39432 North Avenue Beach Park, IL 60099 Voice: 847-872-8070 Fax: 847-589-8081 email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [EMAIL PROTECTED] _____
From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Klaus-Dieter Naujok Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2006 12:33 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [EDI-L] First ever published EDI standard? On Nov 30, 2006, at 10:06 AM, Art Douglas wrote: > The question of the first EDI standard could be as interesting as > the Choice/Pro Life argument about when does life begin. My first > programming assignment was to parse a delimited, formatted, > electronically transmitted message into a database-loadable flat- > file. Looking back, it was a form of EDI, though the format and > standard was proprietary to MAC, the Military Airlift Command of > the US Air Force. (Try parsing a long, delimited message in COBOL > 68 as your first entry into computer programming. - Hint, there is > no string-handling function or anything similar in C68) That was > in 1975. I was 3 1/2 years old at the time. > <disclaimer> The above message contains one lie. </disclaimer> Art, Thanks for the feedback. I assume the lie is in reference to your age :-) I agree with you that one could argue about the first EDI message (standard) for some time, so let's all agree with recorded history that the first EDI exchange took place in 1948 during the Berlin Airlift, where the task of co-ordinating airfreighted consignments of food and consumables (which arrived with differing manifests, languages and numbers of copies) was addressed by devising a standard manifest. As far as I know the standard was never publicly published. > So orgs have been sending EDI for some time, since the day of the > semiphore, I'll submit. I first heard about UCS (or was it TDCC) > in the late '80s, working for a grocery distribution company, but > at that time, I was not involved with the EDI development effort. Here is what I understand to be the history of EDI. In the early 1960 the rail and road transport industries started to engage in what we call today EDI exchanges. This let to the formation of the Transportation Data Coordinating Committee (TDCC) in 1968. In 1973, the TDCC decided to develop a set of standards for EDI between companies and to invent a so-called "living standard", .ie: a standard that included standards on how to change the standards! This resulted in the first inter-industry EDI standard in 1975 covering air, motor, ocean, rail and some banking applications. What evolved included generic formats for general business ANSI X12, first published in 1981; a WINS format for the warehouse industry; and a UCS format for the food and drug industry; and for TDCC. European development of TRADACOMS, ODETTE and JEDI started around 1984. What is not mention in any of the history recaps is what actually was the first "published" EDI message/transaction set? For EDIFACT it was the Invoice. But what was it for the TDCC or who ever actually publicly published the first EDI standard? I am curious to find out what at that time was the most pressing business need for exchange what particular document. What was its structure compared to today's version? Klaus [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ... Please use the following Message Identifiers as your subject prefix: <SALES>, <JOBS>, <LIST>, <TECH>, <MISC>, <EVENT>, <OFF-TOPIC> Job postings are welcome, but for job postings or requests for work: <JOBS> IS REQUIRED in the subject line as a prefix. Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EDI-L/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
