On Wed, Jan 03, 2024 at 10:53:21PM -0800, Russell Senior wrote: > Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company --(1961)--> Pacific NW Bell > --(1988)--> US West --(2000)--> Qwest --(2011)--> CenturyLink (which ...
Thanks, Russell. This Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Bell#Northwest_acquisitions says: "Acquisitions over the years extended Pacific Telephone's territory into Oregon, Washington, and northern Idaho" It would be interesting to learn about the Oregon companies that Pacific Telephone and Telegraph acquired. According to the Oregon History Project: "Pioneer steamboat captain George Ainsworth brought the first telephone to Oregon in 1878, just two years after Alexander Graham Bell patented the new technology. The first telephone conversation in the state took place in Portland between Ainsworth and his wife on a line that connected his office with his home." I wonder if Ainsworth paid royalties to Bell ... This paywalled Jstor article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20611147 ... points to a December 1938 Oregon Historical Quarterly article, which I don't have time to read. Perhaps not relevant to PLUG and Linux, except that I imagine the geeks who cobbled up Portland's first telephone systems were a lot like the geeks who cobbled up Portland's first hobby computer networks a century later (without involving steamboats). Perhaps Portland geeks will cobble up the first telepathy networks a few decades from now, though I fear that future spam will be canned meat composed of our brain cells. ----- Perhaps I have more important things to think about, like configuring SVG-image math equations in my own experimental mediawiki instances. Wikipedia uses a mathoid server, but I'm aiming for standalone content that I can also deploy on net-disconnected laptops. Keith -- Keith Lofstrom kei...@keithl.com
