CDR: Re: I created the "Al Gore created the Internet" story

[Ken Brown]

Declan McCullagh wrote:
> 
> At 12:22 10/18/2000 -0700, jim bell wrote:
> >I ask this, what I believe would be an excellent idea for an article: Why
> >didn't the Internet develop even faster than it actually did?  9600 bps
> >modems existed in 1986, not all that far in performance behind 28Kbps units.
> >By 1986, numerous clones of the IBM PC and AT existed.
> 
> Internet deployment happened at a near-doubling every year starting around
> 1993, coincident with the deployment of the web.

I think the doubling started way before that but most people didn't
notice. There was no sudden acceleration in the early 1990s, just a
continuous exponential curve, the number of networked computers tracking
the total number of computers (& slowly gaining on it - so that back in
the 1970s it was about 2 or 3 years behind, but by abut 1997/8 it had
caught up).

I remember reading a history of computing in the early 1970s (authors
named something like "Toothill and Hoillingsworth" IIRC)) that pointed
out that the total numbers of computers in the world was doubling every
18 months and had been since the things were invented. IIRC they said
that that obviously couldn't continue for much longer because if it did
by some date they gave in the 1980s there would be over a million
computers in the UK alone, & that was obviously absurd. Of course they
were bang on target :-)

> Most computers in 1986 weren't up to it. Many of us were using Apple II
> computers with something like 278x192 resolution (in single hi res mode).
> Imagine such a beast doing networking. Ick.

Were we? Many of us were using IBM ATs or clones, which may have been
clunky machines, but were perfectly capable of doing networking -
remember the Netware explosion? PCs on every desk & all that?  And
people with both money and sense were on Macs (over here in UK they were
never cheap enough to be sensible home computing option for anyone other
than serious fans, I think the price point was different in the US).
Xerox kept on dragging us off to presentations about Star and Parc and
WIMPS and stuff. It worked, but it was too expensive. But PC clones &
Netware were cheap, as modems were getting cheaper.

Actually I was using 3-million-dollars a throw IBM mainframes myself &
they could network as well... but not many people had terminals at home
:-)

Ken