Podcast

The Internet’s Nearly Forgotten History

• 1/5 The Internet's Nearly Forgotten History
• 2/5 The Internet's Nearly Forgotten History
• 3/5 The Internet's Nearly Forgotten History
• 4/5 The Internet's Nearly Forgotten History
• 5/5 In Memoriam Hubert Zimmermann

The 1970s: Speeding up and slowing down.

This is the story of EIN, the European Informatics Network (COST Project 11^G), the treaty for which was signed at the UN in Geneva on November 23rd, 1971.

It can be seen as the first Pan-European experimental test-bed for a “concourse of computers” research infrastructure. EIN was shut down in 1978 and, as the COST evaluation report suggests, killed off by the European PTTs, i.e. the then-all-powerful national postal, telegraph and telephone monopolies.

The story is told by: