The following message is a courtesy copy of an article that has been posted to bit.listserv.ibm-main,alt.folklore.computers as well.
bshan...@rocketsoftware.com (Bob Shannon) writes: > IBM used to give huge discounts to universities. About 15-20 or so > years ago they did away with the discounts and universities started > migrating off the mainframe. The few that are left mostly use > mainframes for some type of administrative processing. The processing > done by students is done on PCs or on eunuchs systems, where years ago > the processing was done on mainframes. I don't think IBM failed to > convince the university in question to stay on the mainframe; I think > IBM abandoned the educational mainframe market a long time ago. the really big discounts were prior to 23jun69 unbundling announcement ... lots of things starting changing with unbundling, charging for software, etc. misc. posts mentioning unbundling http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#unbundle there was some resurgence in the early 80s with ACIS to try and get back into the education market; but it was lots of money being pumped in ... but didn't necessarily result in a of lot corporate business; lots of money went into supporting BITNET (& EARN in europe), big grants to MIT & Project Athena (x-windows, kerberos, other stuff), CMU (Andrew, Camelot, Mach ... vistiges of mach evolved into current system used by Apple), etc. misc. posts mentioning bitnet & earn: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#bitnet current ibm-main mailing list originated on bitnet. other bitnet history http://www.livinginternet.com/u/ui_bitnet.htm from above: The first BITNET connection was from CUNY to Yale University. By the end of 1982 the network included 20 institutions. By the end of the 80's it connected about 450 universities and research institutions and 3000 computers throughout North America and Europe. By the early 90's, BITNET was the most widely used research communications network in the world for email, mailing lists, file transfer, and real-time messaging. ... snip ... history of bitnet listerv http://www.lsoft.com/products/listserv-history.asp from above: In 1985, BITNET was THE academic network. The Internet did not exist yet, and its ancestor, the ARPAnet, was still mostly a defense network. A few US universities were connected to the ARPAnet, but in Europe the only large, non dial-up network was BITNET. BITNET had a Network Information Centre, called BITNIC or just "the NIC". Like most BITNET sites at the time, the NIC was using an IBM mainframe running VM/CMS. ... snip ... BITNET used technology similar to the internal network, misc. posts http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subnetwork.html#internalnet the internal network was larger than the arpanet/internet from just about the beginning until possibly late '85 or early '86 ... 1983 desk ornament for 1000th node on internal network http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/vnet1000.jpg and mostly technology that originated at the science center ... same place that originated virtual machine technology (originally cp40, then cp67 which eventually morphed into vm370) http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#tech545 misc old email related to internal network http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#vnet The arpanet conversion to internetworking protocol (TCP/IP) was 1/1/83 ... which is the technology basis for modern internet. NSFNET backbone is something of the operational basis for modern internet ... some old email http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/lhwemail.html#nsfnet and CIX was the business basis for the modern internet. article from today about the "WEB": The Internet's Big Bang http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1902809_1902810_1905184,00.html and a look at how early HTML morphed from GML/SGML http://infomesh.net/html/history/early/ SLAC visit to CERN and returning to deploy first webserver outside europe/cern (on slac's virtual machine system): http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml misc. past posts mentioning that GML was invented in 1969 at the science center: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/submain.html#sgml -- 40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
