Internet 1985

From CSI Wiki Farm

• Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (WELL) started. Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant started an on-line Bulletin Board System (BBS) to build a “virtual community” of computer users at low cost. Journalists were given free memberships in the early days, leading to many articles about it and helping it grow to thousands of members around the world.

• The National Science Foundation began deploying its new T1 lines, which would be finished by 1988. The NSFNET initially transferred data at 56 kilobits per second, an improvement on the overloaded ARPANET. Traffic continued to increase, though, and in 1987, ARPA awarded Merit Network Inc., IBM, and MCI a contract to expand the Internet by providing access points around the country to a network with a bandwidth of 1.5 megabits per second. In 1992, the network upgraded to T-3 lines, which transmit information at about 45 megabits per second.
• Number of hosts estimated at 1961
  

  

  Microsoft's Windows 1.0 boot up screen
• The NSF awards five contracts to establish generic supercomputing centers at Cornell (CTC), Princeton (JVNC), Illinois (NCSA), Pittsburgh (PSC), and San Diego (SDSC).
• Token ring network technology is developed by the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory.
• SynOptics founded to develop twisted-pair Ethernet hubs.
• Lannet founded to develop Ethernet switching hubs.
• November 20, two years after the initial announcement, Microsoft ships Windows 1.0. Now, rather than typing MS‑DOS commands, you just move a mouse to point and click your way through screens, or “windows.” Bill Gates says, “It is unique software designed for the serious PC user…” It is not well received and suffers dismal sales.
• Ted Waitt and Mike Hammond found Gateway, selling more affordable personal computers.
• Murray Turoff's (see also 1969) group at NJIT offers the first distance learning courses taught entirely over a computer network using collaborative learning approaches via the "virtual classroom" approach.
• San Francisco, Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, The WELL, is created by Stewart Brand.
• In this book the co-founder of WiReD magazine predicts the forthcoming information revolution, Howard Rheingold, Tools for Thought, MIT Press, 1985, ISBN 0-262-68115-3 (2000 edition)
• Quantum Computer Services, which goes on to create AppleLink, Q-Link, PC-Link and, finally, America Online, is founded in Vienna, VA.
• IBM, Sears and CBS announce a partnership to create Trintex, eventually renamed Prodigy.
• IBM is the most profitable company in the world, earning almost $6.6 billion in profits from a revenue of $50 billion.
• IBM introduces the IBM 3090 line of supercomputers.
  

  

  Minitels became very popular in France because of its useful services (1985)
• More than 80 Motorola cellular systems are in service or planned in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The company has received more cellular contracts than has any other provider.
• Ontario, Canada, The Hamilton Spectator starts up CompuSpec, a mainframe-based BBS system.
• Worldwide, 22 nations are said to be involved in videotex and teletext. Eleven use Prestel, five use CEPT, two use NAPLPS and four use French Antiope.
• European countries using teletext or videotex include Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden.
• Videotex systems are planned in at least 20 major U.S. cities. Most are based on either Viewtron or Gateway technology, E&P reports.
• Asian countries using videotex or teletext include Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia and New Zealand.
• Prestel reports its first profit in the third quarter.
• France, some 3 million Minitel terminals are in use.
• French telephone company registers 15.7 million videotex sessions in a two-month period.
• Germany, Bildschirmtext boasts 28,000 subscribers and 3,700 information providers.
• India, Department of Telecom (DoT) and Department of Posts (DoP) are separated.
• India, the government establishes the research organization C-DOT, which develops the Rural Automatic Exchange (RAX), which revolutionizes Indian telecom spread.
• Japan, Construction of a nationwide fiber-optic network nears completion.
• Keycom shuts down late in the year.
• December, The Spanning Tree algorithm was created by Radia Perlman, who also immortalized the algorithm in the form of a poem:

Algorhyme

       I think that I shall never see
       a graph more lovely than a tree.           
       A tree whose crucial property
       is loop-free connectivity.
       A tree that must be sure to span
       so packet can reach every LAN.
       First, the root must be selected.
       By ID, it is elected.
       Least-cost paths from root are traced.
       In the tree, these paths are placed.
       A mesh is made by folks like me,
       then bridges find a spanning tree.
                Radia Perlman

• December, 22 million callers in France use videotex services.
• December, Japan's Captain boasts 630 information providers.
• December, the Internet connects 2,000 hosts.
• December, Compaq securities begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
• November, Japan's first teletext services begin commercial operation around Tokyo and Osaka.
• October 21, General Electric Co. announces the launch of GEnie, a dialup information and entertainment system for PC users. Priced at $35 an hour prime time; $5 an hour nights and weekends.
• October 1, Viewtron goes national with a service for personal computers. Kits for early PCs cost $9.95.
• June 17, introduction of the Intel 386DX microprocessor, operating at 33 MHz (16 MHz?), having a 32 bit bus, 275,000 transistors, being able to address 4 GB of memory. Most analysts consider it overkill.
• June, Multics development is terminated by Honeywell after almost one hundred sites have been installed.
• June, Multics release 11.0.
• June, Prestel reports 103,000 E-mail messages are being sent each month and 7.3 million pages are viewed.
• May, French gaming system, Funitel, averages 100,000 hours of use a month and grosses $7 million in 1985.
• March 15, first registered Internet domain name, Symbolics.com, is issued.
• February, eighth edition of UNIX from Bell Labs. This is labeled a research version.
• January, Compaq reports second year revenues of $329 million.
• Quantum Computer Services, which later changes its name to America Online, debuts. It offers email, electronic bulletin boards, news, and other information.
• Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at USC is given responsibility for DNS root management by DCA, and SRI for DNS NIC registrations
• Symbolics.com is assigned on 15 March to become the first registered domain. Other firsts: cmu.edu, purdue.edu, rice.edu, ucla.edu (April); css.gov (June); mitre.org, .uk (July)
• 100 years to the day of the last spike being driven on the cross-Canada railroad, the last Canadian university is connected to NetNorth in a one year effort to have coast-to-coast connectivity
• RFC 968: 'Twas the Night Before Start-up