The First Internet

Tully

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Back in the 30s I used to spend some summers with my grandparents on the farm in Wisconsin.

They had a "Farmers Telephone system". They farmers owned it & maintained it. It was a system of TWO wires on telephone poles running through the whole area. It had a central office in the local village.

They did not have any electricity or running water. It was 5 rooms & a path!

It ran on a signal system. Any emergency was one long ring! Everyone got on the line to find out what the emergency was. The problem was that every listener degraded the line somewhat! (Broadband?)

My grand parents' signal was 2 longs & 1 short.

You rang other people on the line by their ring code (URL).

Everyone could hear all the rings & know who was being called!
This was great if you wanted to find out what was going on!

Everyone could listen to all conversations. If someone was sick, you would listen in on their ring to find out how they were. Some phones had switches. When you switched it on other people online could not hear what was going on in the room. It was called the "Rubber Switch", because it allowed listening to other people without them knowing. This was Called "Rubbernecking"



Gossip was rife! Just like Facebook without video!

It was used to find the time, cooking instructions, advice on sick animals etc.

Who was going into town so you could hook a ride Etc., Etc.

It was the FIRST Internet!!

Tully
 

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How very interesting, Tully. You are absolutely correct. It was the first Internet even though you were using a telephone instead of a computer. One cannot really call it an automated telephone system either. Do you remember if this was set up as a complete loop or did it spoke?

How we've come so far with technology! I have a nephew that works for at&t out of the Twin Cities. He works on a project now that’s developing 4G. It will work off what they call Super WiFi. Voice will be changed to data and transmitted over an Intranet. Mind boggling technology indeed!
 

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Our home phone was just like that, except it had an operator who, we believed listened in all the calls. Our ring was 1 long and a short. you had to ask for people by name not a number.. Interesting time when we finally got a dial phone, our number was 2141 which was easy to remember. du 2141 was our exchange.

Rich
 

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Very interesting Tully, thanks for sharing that with us :)
 

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First Internet

It was a loop!

Also had a central office. Had to call into it to make long distant calls.

A long distant call was a momentous event. It was very expensive. A long distant call was to the Capital of Wisconsin. Madison. It probably cost 10 cents, the price of a gallon of gasoline!

Calling Madison Wisc. was like calling to another country. To us it was the edge of our world!

The girl in the central office was the Facebook of the day, she knew everything & everybody!

All farm activity & planning was carried out over the phone. Everything was a community activity.

Tully
 

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It was a loop!

I figured as much otherwise you'd need a switchboard to connect line to line, although the operator had to connect to onother outside line to get long distance. Everyone could hear that conversation too??!! She had to listen in on all of them!

The girl in the central office was the Facebook of the day, she knew everything & everybody!

LOL! That's funny stuff, Tully.
 

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That's quite fascinating...

By 30s, you mean 1930s?
 

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Yes, Cokie. 1930's. Tully was born in the late 20's. He's 80+ years old. The oldest on the forum.

Thing is, and I just thought of this, he's old enough to be my father. That makes him old enogh to be your great-great-grandfather. ;)
 

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That really makes me feel old!

But me & my wife enjoy every moment!

Tully
 

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Wow, that must be amazing to see the progress of technology!
 

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That really makes me feel old!

But me & my wife enjoy every moment!

Tully

I apologize if it made you feel old, Tully. It wasn't my intent. Quite frankly, I think you are young at heart for you state memories often. That, my friend, I think is what keeps us young at heart. "Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you" to quote a Simon and Garfunkle song. The heart and mind want to, but the body often says no in our older age.

Wow, that must be amazing to see the progress of technology!

Not sure who you adressed that to and by all means, I don't want to steal any of Tully's thunder. He'll have to answer to his himself. I know he's got a score of years more of experience.

I've seen a lot of change through the years. I remember horse-drawn wagons in Chicago that still existed when I was young. Very few, but I remember seeing them. Not sure why, but as I can tell by talking to other people, I'm one of the very few that remember things at a very early age. Probably my first memory was standing in my crib and looking out. That's usually at the age of around 10 months to a year old when a child can pull themselves up and stand to do that. My mother told me I started walking at 11 months. It could have been a year or possibly later, but still quite an early age. One thing for sure, I remember my Grandmother's 80th birthday party. I was 14 months old. I remember pictures being taken because of the flashes which would get any child's attention. We have the pics in a family album.

Anywho, I've seen a lot of progression in my time, especially technological progress due to WWII. Computers were a huge innovation during the war. Nuclear energy and the bomb was, of course, was one of the biggest. A large population growth being a baby boomer myself. Industrial growth. Housing and building boom starting right after that war.

TV was a huge one. Our first TV was somewhere around a 13 or 14 inch black and white screen. That was around 1956. There were 4 channels. ABC, CBS, NBC, and locally WGN out of Chicago. The developement from antennae to cable and dish. IMO too many channels to choose from now. Color TV was late 60's.

The cold war led to the Apollo misions and the moon landings. Quite an event to watch in on's lifetime.

I could go on and on. One can read a lot of this at: http://www.eightforums.com/chillout-room/7538-personal-computer-related-memories-i-remember.html
 

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Hey!

I took NO offense!

I enjoy being old!

I can get away with things you youngsters wouldn't even try!

I can totter on my cane & get help right away, (sometimes I really need it!)

Tully
 

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Hey!

I took NO offense!

I enjoy being old!

I can get away with things you youngsters wouldn't even try!

I can totter on my cane & get help right away, (sometimes I really need it!)

Tully

OK good. No offense. As us hippies say "Very cool, Dude!" :cool:

If I may say with much sincerity that you are one in a million on this planet!

Somehow, though, I sense that at times of heated debate I wouldn't want to get within your cane's reach! :p
 

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Tully, you sound like you've had a lot of fun!
 

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I was scrounging in the attic & found the following;

51/4" floppies for IE first edition!
" " for Windows!
" " For MS DOS!
" " " Scriptplus, WordStar & Visacalc precursors to MS Office, Word & Excell.

I have fond memories of those programs!

Tully
 

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Brings back memories that early telephone system you describe Tully.

It had its own user language as well.. I can remember whenever my Mother would go to make a call and she'd pick up the receiver and first have to enquire if the party line was busy. She would say "Working?" or "Are you there?" which got shortened to "Are-there". I still hear her sometimes say it today when she picks up the phone LOL!

So there you go, they even had high tech jargon back then too.

And yes, although you have a few more years on me, I worked with a lot of that software as well and have a lot of it still on floppies and the original manuals - I can't bring myself to throw it out.

Good on ya!
 

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The first Internet IMHO was ham radio. In fact I got my license back in 1975 while I was in high school. That was during the CB craze. While I still have my ham radio license, I don't use it much anymore.

Also I recall reading about a book titled the Victorian Internet. It is about telegraph operators in the late 1800s. Some of them even formed relationships with other telegraph operators. Sound familiar? Of course telegraph operators were few and far between and it required telegraphy skills. So telegraph addiction only applied to a small subset of society.
 

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The first Internet IMHO was ham radio. In fact I got my license back in 1975 while I was in high school. That was during the CB craze. While I still have my ham radio license, I don't use it much anymore.

Also I recall reading about a book titled the Victorian Internet. It is about telegraph operators in the late 1800s. Some of them even formed relationships with other telegraph operators. Sound familiar? Of course telegraph operators were few and far between and it required telegraphy skills. So telegraph addiction only applied to a small subset of society.

The good old days when USB stood for Upper Side Band.
 

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