email was Mac something something

From: William Donzelli <aw288_at_osfn.org>
Date: Wed Jan 12 16:54:04 2005

> Hell SAGE had multiple sites and modems, electronic transmission
> and storage of human-addressed email is a really obvious idea once
> you have a few givens.

AUTODIN - the network before the Arpanet. Made by...
 
> Western Union did automatic, electrical-plus-electronic unattended
> store-and-forward of telegrams (in a few high-traffic areas),
> that's pushing "e-mail" pretty hard!

It was pretty damn complex, actually, and ran using modified model 28
Teletypes. The warehouse I cleared out in New Jersey a couple of years ago
had some of the equipment, and the greenkeys people sopped them up. Some
of the things were pretty cool - a 400 cps (!) paper tape punch, model 28s
with a rare HEREIS feature, still others that could defer incoming
messages to paper tape as temporary storage if the printer mechanism was
in use, and so on.

William Donzelli
aw288_at_osfn.org
Received on Wed Jan 12 2005 - 16:54:04 GMT