[SIGCIS-Members] Query about invention of wired networking

[Guy Fedorkow]

As to computers connected together, I was a bit surprised to see a 
rather speculative report to the Navy on how digital computers could be 
interconnected (by radio!) to solve an anti-submarine-warfare problem, 
written by Forrester and Everett of MIT's Project Whirlwind in October, 
1947.  This was two years before they had one working computer, let 
alone two to interconnect.
   By 1951, they were demonstrating real-time Whirlwind connected to a 
radar station by telephone links, but it wasn't until SAGE that they had 
enough hardware to interconnect computers.
   You can read their report at
https://dome.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.3/45952/MC665_r28_L-2.pdf
   They obviously didn't get the contract :-)

/guy



On 8/25/2021 4:32 AM, Pierre Mounier-Kuhn wrote:
> Hello Doug,
>
> Other members (particularly Tom Haigh and Peter Eckstein) have 
> objected already that Turing's 1936 paper /Computable Numbers/ was 
> essentially a solution to an abstract problem of mathematical logic, 
> NOT the invention/project of a universal computer, which appeared a 
> decade later in the ENIAC team and the Von Neumann reports. (Warning: 
> You've innocently walked into a worldwide quarrel "Historians vs. 
> Martin Davis' /The Universal Computer: The Road from Leibniz to Turing"/!)
>
> Yet this does not alter the main object of your query, to which the 
> answer is definitely your option n°2. As far as I know, just like 
> designing the first computers was essentially an engineers' effort 
> (inventing storage devices, etc.), "people first begin hooking 
> computers up to one another experimentally, and then a theorist 
> subsequently created an idea to describe/frame what was happening". 
> Peter Eckstein's message mentions Binac, which is a remarkable "first" 
> case; it was designed by an engineers' company to solve a practical 
> problem.
>
> From what I have seen in Europe, the teams which designed early 
> computers included telecom engineers, who quite "naturally" 
> experimented with distant connections between a computer and a 
> teleprinter, then imagined how to integrate computers in data networks 
> and found a need for that in air-defense systems. An example is given 
> in the memoirs of FH Raymond, published in 1989 in the /Annals of the 
> History of Computing/, "SEA: An Adventure with a Sad Ending": This 
> small French computer company demonstrated in 1955 a remote processing 
> link between its Paris computer and a teleprinter installed in 
> Brussels at a professional fair. Shortly after, Raymond wrote a report 
> suggesting to replace, in the future, paper with electronic data in 
> the phone directory. His company simultaneously participated in the 
> design of computerized air-defense systems (the contract was finally 
> won by IBM France in 1958), which brings us nearer to the 
> interconnection of computers, not just to remote-processing. France 
> was some 5 years behind the US and Britain in computer development, so 
> what I describe here certainly goes for other countries. The Soviet 
> side is particularly interesting (see "InterNyet", Sacha Gerovitch's 
> publications, etc.)
>
> For more suggestions of readings, I would just copy-paste Tom Haigh's 
> message.
> Regarding theoretical work, one could add a subsidiary question : To 
> what extent were theoretical studies of digital networks extensions of 
> studies about data flows within a computer (queuing problems, etc.), 
> and what were the radically novel problems raised by digital network 
> design?
> Best,
> Pierre
>
> Pierre Mounier-Kuhn
> CNRS, Sorbonne Université & CentraleSupelec
> https://cnrs.academia.edu/PierreMounierKuhn
> http://laboutique.edpsciences.fr/produit/846/9782759818198/Histoire%20illustree%20de%20linformatique
> http://www.rdv-histoire.com/mounier-kuhn-pierre-eric
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *De: *"Douglas Lucas" <dal at riseup.net>
> *À: *"members" <members at sigcis.org>
> *Envoyé: *Mardi 24 Août 2021 23:44:24
> *Objet: *[SIGCIS-Members] Query about invention of wired networking
>
> Dear SIGCIS members,
>
> I'm a freelance writer/journalist who's published in multiple news 
> outlets on hacktivism and who's lurked on this email list for some 
> time. The past several months, I've been reading a great dealing about 
> Alan Turing and the math behind /Computable Numbers/ (fundamental 
> theorem of arithmetic, Gödel encoding, etc). A fairly straightforward 
> question occurred to me, one I hope this list can help answer:
>
> As is well known, Turing's 1936 paper /Computable Numbers/ invented 
> the concept of a universal machine, which includes what today would be 
> called an airgapped computer. For quite a while, all computers 
> (universal machines) were airgapped devices. The historical casual 
> chain is clear: first the idea documented in /Computable Numbers /came 
> into existence, and only later are physical computers actually built, 
> initially as standalone, airgapped devices.
>
> But how did plugging computers into one another with wires/cables 
> begin? Did a thinker first conceive of a profound idea underpinning 
> wired/cabled networking, and then only later, engineers implemented 
> that concept in the physical realm? Or, did people first begin hooking 
> computers up to one another, perhaps experimentally, and then a 
> theorist subsequently created an idea to describe/frame what was 
> happening (maybe a mathematical graph theory or something)?
>
> To put it another way, in terms of a simple standardized test-like 
> verbal analogy, /Computable Numbers/ is to airgapped computers as ??? 
> is to wired/cabled networking of computers.
>
> I omit wireless connections (e.g., Bluetooth) for the time being.
>
> Thanks much,
>
> Doug Lucas
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion 
> list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member 
> posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list 
> archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ 
> and you can change your subscription options at 
> http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are athttp://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/  and you can change your subscription options athttp://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/attachments/20210906/f72bba9f/attachment.htm>