On Fri, Oct 9, 2026 at 9:56 PM Bret Busby <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 9/10/26 22:26, CGS wrote: > > On 2026-10-08, Bret Busby <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > >> Out of interest, as a person who has used alpine since it superseded > >> pine, and, before that, pine, since before the Internet, and, having > > > > How did you use pine before the Internet? > > > > > pine was used as a mail application on a multi-user mainframe at a > university, and, between users on another system. Both pine and elm were > available. From memory, elm used a horizontally split screen for message > index and message content. elm was the more commonly used mail > application at the university (at the time, the institution as not a > university - more detail about this, is below), but, elm was more > difficult to use, and, over the decades, I have found pine/alpine to be > the most powerful user email application, making all the other email > applications look like toys, for use as user email applications. > > While at the university, I saw on a noticeboard, and advertisement for a > localised (Perth, Western Australia) network provider, who provided WAN > access for people interested in learning and using UNIX. The provider > was named dialix. the facility provided dialup communications, using a > modem, to the UNIX server. So, I subscribed to that. > > dialix used the SLIP/PPP protocol, from memory, for users to dialup and > connect to dialix. > > I believe that it was when I was a dialix user, that I had sent an email > message to a USA major book publisher, enquiring about a particular > book that I was seeking, and, I got a response back within half an hour, > from the marketing manager of the publisher (it might have been the > MacMillan publishing company, it is too long ago for me to be sure), > advising me that the book had been out of print for a few years, and, > was no longer available as a new book. > > The level of service of the publisher was exemplary, and, much better > than the quality of service of most businesses nowadays, and, the > communication speed, was good, given the applicable technology, and, in > comparison with quality standards that currently exist, including a > scenario, some years ago, where an email message from a relative, took > two weeks to reach me, from New Zealand (postal mail would have been > much faster, and, transporting it by canoe, paddling between there and > here, about 5000km, may have been faster), with email taking over a > week, to travel from one mailserver to another, within the server room > of a major Perth ISP, that is, I believe, now one of the five or so > major Internet Access Providers in Australia. That was via the World > Wide Web, not the text only internets such as DARPAnet or AARPAnet or > "The Internet". > > Both the facilities - the university WAN and the dialix facility, were > nodes of AARnet, the Australian Academic Research network, which was a > node of DARPAnet, the predecessor of "The Internet". > > This was before operating systems with GUI's, such as MS Windows, and > Mozaic, were available to the public. > > "The Internet" is an internet. > > An internet, from my education, is a network that provides for > communications between computers using different companies' operating > systems. > > For example, DECnet, which was used by the Western Australian TAFE > education system, at the time of my initially learning about networks, > allowed the DEC PDP11 minicomputers, which ran RSX and/or RSTS/e, to > communicate with the central VAX-11/785 (I think, from memory, it was a > 785 - this is going back about 45 years, and, I had been a user on > different academic VAX systems, the first one running BSD 4.2, which was > in 1979, I believe - my use of that one, was as a user on a multiuser > computer, and I do not remember it being connected to a LAN or WAN - it > may have been, but I do not remember that, and, connection from the > terminals to that VAX, were through a telephone switchboard, as used in > manual exchanges, and, by armies at that time, for telephone > communications). We could use the particular college's (the particular > college that I attended, in the multi-campus TAFE system) PDP 11/44, for > running BASIC and Pascal, for learning those languages, and, we had to > log in, across the TAFE network, to the VAX, to run FORTRAN (we were > using FORTRAN-77) on the VAX, for learning to program FORTRAN. The > FORTRAN that we were using, in that system, was VAX FORTRAN, which was > an enhanced, and, not the ISO standard, FORTRAN. > > Now, that was DECnet, which was a proprietary network operating system, > which provided for communication between only DEC proprietary operating > systems. > > Internet operating systems existed, and, I believe, from memory (I could > be wrong about the particular name), that the IBM one was named SNA. > That allowed nodes on the network, to be using different companies' > operating systems, such as the DEC mini computer operating systems, and, > IBM minicomputer operating systems. > > So, that is my understanding of what is an internet. > > "The Internet" is simply an instantiation of an internet, for which, in > the development of "the Internet", whether it was done when the DARPAnet > was being used, the Internet Protocol, was developed, which also > provided for such functionality such as redundancy, which allowed for a > node on a pathway of data transmission, to be bypassed, when using the > particular node, was not feasible. > > And, the facility to which most people now, refer as "The Internet", is > not "The Internet", but, is the GUI World Wide Web, that runs on "The > Internet" (and, I use "runs on", in its correct sense, and, not, as many > people mistakenly indicate an operating system running on top of the > applications that run on the operating system, such as "I am using > alpine running under Debian 24" - the application runs on the operating > system, NOT under the operating system. What runs under the operating > system, is the BIOS. > > At the university, with the university (this was before the institution > became a university - it was, before being a university, the Western > Australian College of Advanced Education, previously being the Western > Australian Teachers' College (for teaching prospective teachers) being a > node on AARnet, which was a node on the DARPAnet, I remember a notice > being posted on the noticeboards, by the academic (as opposed to > support) IT Department Head of Department, that students were required > to stop playing MUDD across the WAN, as complaints had been received > from NASA, of staff resources and time being misused by playing MUDD > across the network, with IT students from the WACAE. > > So, after all of that, that, I believe, is a (kind of - it could have > been longer) brief ( :) ) explanation of how I was using pine, before > "The Internet". > > "The Internet" is widely misunderstood, including its age, and, how it > fits into ICT, and, what it really is, and, the use of the term, is > mostly, a malapropism. > > And, when "The Internet" came to be used, to supersede the use of the > AARPAnet DARPAnet, and, in Australia, the node network (the network that > is/was a node of the AARPAnet/DARPAnet), that was a step in the > evolution of ICT, after which step, came the development and > establishment of the widespread use of, the World Wide Web, which is > now, mostly misnamed as "The Internet", which the World Wide Web is not.
You should consider joining the Internet History mailing list. A lot of the [remaining] original Internet engineers hang there and share their stories, including their recollections of working group activities and deliverables that laid the foundation for the modern Internet. The discussions are held in public to help document what happened in the very beginnings. <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history>. Jeff
