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A map of the entire internet as of May 1973

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Re: A map of the entire internet as of May 1973

#11

Post by camiller »

CPLX wrote: post #10

One interesting aside is you can see from that even this early in the evolution of what's still a very sparse network, how dense the resources are in California, presaging the eventual concentration of the "internet business" there. Sensitive dependence on initial conditions and such. It's also interesting to note that the DC area is the #2 (arguably tied with Boston) given how relatively inconsequential that communi…

"It's also interesting to note that the DC area is the #2 (arguably tied with Boston) given how relatively inconsequential that community is now to what we'd consider the tech sector."

Remember, back then it was ARPAnet. ARPA was/is the Defense Departments Advanced Research Projects Agency. If you think the defence department then or now as not part of the tech sector you would be underestimating the investment in technology research made by the DOD.

Re: A map of the entire internet as of May 1973

#13

Post by CPLX »

camiller wrote: post #11
CPLX wrote: post #10

One interesting aside is you can see from that even this early in the evolution of what's still a very sparse network, how dense the resources are in California, presaging the eventual concentration of the "internet business" there. Sensitive dependence on initial conditions and such. It's also interesting to note that the DC area is the #2 (arguably tied with Boston) given how relatively inconsequential that communi…

"It's also interesting to note that the DC area is the #2 (arguably tied with Boston) given how relatively inconsequential that community is now to what we'd consider the tech sector." Remember, back then it was ARPAnet. ARPA was/is the Defense Departments Advanced Research Projects Agency. If you think the defence department then or now as not part of the tech sector you would be underestimating the investment in te…

But of course. California's nascent technology industry was also created by Federal dollars, just look at Ames, Rand, etc, on the left side of the map. The interesting question I was pondering is why the transition from public to private/consumer sector happened in one place but not nearly so much in the other.

Re: A map of the entire internet as of May 1973

#14

Post by externalmodem »

For a deeper dive into the history of ARPANET cartography, check out this paper (many more maps inside!): Fidler, B., and M. Currie. “The Production and Interpretation of ARPANET Maps.” IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 37, no. 1 (January 2015): 44–55. doi:10.1109/MAHC.2015.16. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7057559/?arnumber=705755...

Re: A map of the entire internet as of May 1973

#16

Post by swiley »

camiller wrote: post #11
CPLX wrote: post #10

One interesting aside is you can see from that even this early in the evolution of what's still a very sparse network, how dense the resources are in California, presaging the eventual concentration of the "internet business" there. Sensitive dependence on initial conditions and such. It's also interesting to note that the DC area is the #2 (arguably tied with Boston) given how relatively inconsequential that communi…

"It's also interesting to note that the DC area is the #2 (arguably tied with Boston) given how relatively inconsequential that community is now to what we'd consider the tech sector." Remember, back then it was ARPAnet. ARPA was/is the Defense Departments Advanced Research Projects Agency. If you think the defence department then or now as not part of the tech sector you would be underestimating the investment in te…

If you look at maps of the modern internnet, DC has an extremely large collection of international cable terminals. a lot of traffic goes throught it.

Re: A map of the entire internet as of May 1973

#17

Post by jhbadger »

CPLX wrote: post #10

One interesting aside is you can see from that even this early in the evolution of what's still a very sparse network, how dense the resources are in California, presaging the eventual concentration of the "internet business" there. Sensitive dependence on initial conditions and such. It's also interesting to note that the DC area is the #2 (arguably tied with Boston) given how relatively inconsequential that communi…

That was because Tysons Corner was (and still is) a major hub of the Internet. Initially because of the DOD and military contractors, but a big chunk of Amazon's cloud is located in data centers there and nearby.

Re: A map of the entire internet as of May 1973

#18

Post by workergnome »

Hi there—original tweeter here.

Some context for the picture—my father, Paul, was the business manager for the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon at the time, and is a fabulous record-keeper, so he kept all sorts of interesting things from that era.

He was also one of the founders of Three Rivers Computer as well as PERQ, which were tech transfer spin-outs from the CS dept in the seventies.

Re: A map of the entire internet as of May 1973

#19

Post by amelius »

IncRnd wrote: post #15
lordnacho wrote: post #12

Which modern protocols even existed back then? IP? TCP? FTP?

FTP 1971, RFC 114 TCP & IP, 1974, A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication, https://web.archive.org/web/20160304150203/http://ece.ut.ac....

What protocol did they used on the lowest level. E.g., what modulation scheme did they use? Did it run over the phone network? Or did they have their own cables?

Re: A map of the entire internet as of May 1973

#20

Post by lb1lf »

mhandley wrote: post #9
lb1lf wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...being a bit of a pedant (and Norwegian!) I'd like to point out that the first international link was precisely the one to NORSAR at Kjeller; the link over the North Sea to UCL was the second. :) (Kjeller/NORSAR was hooked up in June 1973 using a blistering fast 9.6kbps link, if memory serves)

The history of this link is quite interesting: http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/internet-history.html Anyway, I think we can agree to share the glory; although the first international link was to the TIP at Kjeller, the first end host was the PDP-9 in London, which itself acted as a relay to the University of London CDC.

I think you are right; however, I will have to dig into my old copies of the Norwegian engineering monthly Teknisk Ukeblad; I read a very interesting feature there a few years ago, interviewing a couple of then NORSAR employees who admitted that quite a lot of tinkering and exploring resulted once the link was there - as you'd expect, given the nature of boffins...

Edit - I'd like to dig out the old feature not to dispute your suggestion; only to share what was a very entertaining read. :-)

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