On Fri, 22 Mar 2002 14:16:15 GMT, "George Copeland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>"David Debono" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message >[EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]... > >> Far enough. Are you going back to the internet pre-html days as well? >> It always makes me smile when people say the internet was created in >> 1991 (or whatever). Not many people remember BIX, CIX, early >> compuserve and things like fidonet and janet these days. > >I don't see any relevance of these issues to business history. From a >business perspective, the main innovation was the TCP/IP stack, which >provides a standard way to connect computers. In 1994, we (all of us in >business technology) were working on systems that we called "client-server", >and each system pretty much had its own connection scheme. Nobody does that >anymore. > Well *an* innovation was TCP as a protocol and its uptake by the business community was a factor but the protocol started to be taken up in the late 1980s IIRC. I remember going to a seminar in about 1988 that talked about this. It was during the great Ethernet V Token ring battle. :-) I think that the relevance was that these dissonent systems of interconnectivity. email and such like, were brought together, struggling, and unified in a disjointed manner. I well remember being part of a discussion about the viability of getting a dial-in service to a computer and charging people, oh, about a tenner-a-month for the service but did not have the money to buy into the startup company that resulted. If you are in the UK you will have heard of a company called Demon Internet? The ramifications of that discussion are still felt with ISP's in the UK (Demon included) still having a problem charging more than £10.00 per month (£11.75 with VAT) for their base services. It was thought about as high as people would go in 1990 for a service but has not kept up with inflation at all over the last 12 years or so thus causing revenue problems with many ISPs requiring investment in equipment to keep up with technology but a limited, by custom these days, to an arbitary figure bandied around at the time. Oh well remeniscences :-) Take care David D. The Mediaeval Combat Society The Historical Reenactment Web Site http://www.montacute.net/histrenact/welcome.htm
