<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Ulysses<div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Just as a comment to confirm your hunch. You are correct. Bitnet was not (knowingly) used for business as the Bylaws of the network precluded it being used for business purposes. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">David</div><div class=""><br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Sep 29, 2020, at 7:02 PM, ULYSSES PASCAL <<a href="mailto:upascal@ucla.edu" class="">upascal@ucla.edu</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class="">Hello <div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">In the course of my research on the history of international business information systems I came across this article about the history of BITNET in Singapore: </div><div class=""><a href="http://phyweb.physics.nus.edu.sg/~phytanb/bitnet4.htm" class="">http://phyweb.physics.nus.edu.sg/~phytanb/bitnet4.htm</a><br class=""></div><div class="">It describes setting up BITNET at the National University of Singapore in 1987</div><div class="">And it even provides a copy of the first message sent with BITNET to the National University of Singapore:</div><div class=""><a href="http://phyweb.physics.nus.edu.sg/~phytanb/email2.htm" class="">http://phyweb.physics.nus.edu.sg/~phytanb/email2.htm</a><br class=""></div><div class="">Unfortunately it is not immediately useful for my research (to my knowledge BITNET was not used for business communication?) but I hope you and your colleagues find it interesting.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Best,</div><div class=""><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr" class=""><div class=""><div dir="ltr" class="">Ulysses Pascal<div class="">PhD Candidate<br class="">Information Studies, UCLA </div><div class=""><a href="http://automatedfutures.net/" target="_blank" class="">automatedfutures.net</a></div></div></div></div></div></div><br class=""></div></div><br class=""><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 9:22 AM David Grier <<a href="mailto:grier@email.gwu.edu" class="">grier@email.gwu.edu</a>> wrote:<br class=""></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div style="overflow-wrap: break-word;" class="">Kathrin<div class=""><span style="white-space:pre-wrap" class=""> </span>Bitnet had an early variant of the of the listserve program developed by a student at the Ecole Politechnique in Paris. The program ran on IBM mainframes. It spread rapidly across the net though only a couple of dozen sites had large number of lists. Most of the lists dealt with network management. A number deal with with the usual techie hobbies. A few took the Apranet lists and redistributed them. (And you might want to look there in terms of chasing patent ideas. Arpanet/CSnet/NSFNet were far more technically inclined than the Bitnet community. In fact they advertised themselves as" the network for everybody else.”). </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">A few of the list serves have been archived but they tended to be abandoned as schools switched their primary servers from 370 architecture machines ro unix machines. It is attached</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I did an article on bitnet and the list serves in the Annals 20 years ago. It is attached if it may be of use. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">David</div><div class=""><br class=""><div class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Aug 25, 2020, at 12:07 PM, Wernsdorf Kathrin <<a href="mailto:kathrin.wernsdorf@ip.mpg.de" target="_blank" class="">kathrin.wernsdorf@ip.mpg.de</a>> wrote:</div><br class=""><div class=""><div style="font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none;direction:ltr;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt" class=""><div class="">Hello everyone,</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><font size="2" class=""><span style="font-size:10pt" class="">My coauthors and I are currently working on a project measuring the impact of Bitnet on academic patenting. After the adoption of Bitnet by a university between 1981 and 1990, we find a substantial increase in patenting by university-affiliated researchers. We are now wondering why this is the case.</span></font></div><div class=""><font size="2" class=""><span style="font-size:10pt" class=""><br class=""></span></font></div><div class=""><font size="2" class=""><span style="font-size:10pt" class="">Reading about Bitnet, we came across the fact that email lists were an especially popular item. We think it would be fascinating to know the content of these email lists. Do you happen to know whether data on these email lists exists and is available somewhere? Also, do you know whether some archives of listserves or discussion groups exist where users discussed for what they used Bitnet and what challenges they faced?<br class=""></span></font></div><div class=""><font size="2" class=""><span style="font-size:10pt" class=""><br class=""></span></font></div><div class="">Any thoughts and hints are highly appreciated. Many thanks in advance.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Kathrin</div><div class=""><div class=""><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div></div></div></div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div style="font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none;direction:ltr;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt" class=""><div class=""><div class=""><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)" class=""></span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div><div style="overflow-wrap: break-word;" class=""><div class=""><div class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div style="font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none;direction:ltr;font-family:Tahoma;font-size:10pt" class=""><div class=""><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)" class="">_________________________________</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif" class="">Kathrin Wernsdorf</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif" class="">Doctoral Student and Junior Research Fellow</span></p><div class=""><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)" class=""> </span><br class=""></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:13pt;color:rgb(79,129,189)" class="">Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)" class=""></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif" class="">Marstallplatz 1</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif" class="">80539 München</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)" class=""><a href="mailto:kathrin.wernsdorf@ip.mpg.de" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class=""><span style="color:rgb(5,99,193)" class="">kathrin.wernsdorf@ip.mpg.de</span></a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)" class=""><a href="http://www.ip.mpg.de/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" class=""><span style="color:rgb(5,99,193)" class="">www.ip.mpg.de</span></a></span></p><div class=""><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)" class=""> </span><br class=""></div></div></div><span style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none;float:none;display:inline" class="">_______________________________________________</span><br style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none" class=""><span style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none;float:none;display:inline" class="">This email is relayed from members at<span class=""> </span></span><a href="http://sigcis.org/" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px" target="_blank" class="">sigcis.org</a><span style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration:none;float:none;display:inline" class="">, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. 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