carlsson
Veteran Member
Tom Van Vleck writes about the history of electronic mail, at least from his horizon at MIT in the early 1960's:
http://www.multicians.org/thvv/mail-history.html
Electronic mail around 1965 sounds amazing, but the part about instant messaging is what really surprises me. Certainly people would be working on their project during the computer time, but one wonders how many of the instant messages were unrelated nonsense.
Prior to the time-sharing systems, I suppose computer operators would exchange messages via written notes on paper instead of some storage media?
Haha. I followed the link about 7094, reading about early programming languages:
Computer people already (?!) back then had a great sense of humor. I suppose the equivalent today would be if the compiler upon error opened a full screen window featuring Bart Simpson saying something demeaning to the user.
http://www.multicians.org/thvv/mail-history.html
Electronic mail around 1965 sounds amazing, but the part about instant messaging is what really surprises me. Certainly people would be working on their project during the computer time, but one wonders how many of the instant messages were unrelated nonsense.
Prior to the time-sharing systems, I suppose computer operators would exchange messages via written notes on paper instead of some storage media?
Haha. I followed the link about 7094, reading about early programming languages:
MAD was descended from ALGOL 58: it had block structure and a fast compiler, and if your compilation failed, the compiler used to print out a line printer portrait of Alfred E. Neumann. (MIT took that out to save paper.)
Computer people already (?!) back then had a great sense of humor. I suppose the equivalent today would be if the compiler upon error opened a full screen window featuring Bart Simpson saying something demeaning to the user.
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