GENERAL INFORMATION

ABOUT JIM PELKEY    |    LINKS    |    FEEDBACK    |     SITEMAP INTRODUCTION    |   SITEMAP

The History of Computer Communications website lets a reader explore one person’s reconstruction of the history of computer communications between 1968 and 1988 in two ways: through a hypertext index or by reading the book. This is possible because the book was written in hypertext blocks that were parsed by the index categories: market sectors, organizations, technologies and products.

Our original vision was that the History of Computer Communications website would reflect our sense of how a collaborative history collection process might be structured.  What we envisioned was to transfer the basic data presented in this website; and then to develop a way others could add and link their "story" of this history,  or relevant snippets that relate to certain areas of this history, or even add stories that preceded or follow the time frame from 1969 -1988.

At this point the amount of data to be transfered to html/CSS is larger than our budget. You may notice that we have only uploaded 9 interview transcripts of the 88 people interviewed for this book; and that we only we only present the start-ups companies: Codex, Micom, Ungerman-Bass, Network Equipent Technologies, and Wellfleet in the organization section. This sample should give the reader a good insight into how the eventual site can function and thus a basis for meaningful feedback.

While we think the site is an important addition to the history of computer communications as it is, our hope is to find an "angel", or a company or an educational institution that is interested in helping us to push the edge of the envelope with this project, so we have the funds will be available to pay one or more historians to manage the site as well as the evolvution of the site as new technologies make for improved history collection. Sponsor support will also be used to digitize market data and reports, media coverage of the day, and personal collections. Collaborating with other institutions will also be critical.

We thank you in advance for any comments you might make to help guide the next release and then the final site. jimhistory@gmail.com