-----Original Message----- From: owner-ifip_ga@ifip.or.at [mailto:owner-ifip_ga@ifip.or.at]On Behalf Of Plamen Nedkov Sent: quarta-feira, 6 de Novembro de 2002 08:06 To: all Subject: [IFIP] A Developing Story: Sailboats in the Wind

Dear All,

Following Ashley's and Dick's messages ref. http://www.ifip.or.at/mail/msg00185.html we received a note from past president Pierre Bobillier re. his first experience in computer connection between Switzerland and New York. May years ago, Pierre and a colleague were in Radio Suisse in Bern to establish a first computer connection with New York. They used a separate line for voice at the cost of 4.30 CHF/minute and "succeeded" to get a message from NY: "Hello Switzerland". Then the connection was lost and they were told that the transatlantic cable had been cut. They repeated the trial two weeks later, succeeded to exchange two or three messages and the line was cut - believe it or not, but the transatlantic cable had been cut again.

Pierre's message made the IFIP Executive Director reminisce of his first email experience. One story leads to another so we decided to post both Pierre's full message and Plamen's account at

http://www.ifip.or.at/secretariat/tc6/e_experiences.pdf

The article will tell you about a Foundation, in which Saharov, McNamara, Sculley, the IFIP President and other personalities helped converge East and West by intensive use of email communications and of the planning of an education project based on Soviet and US satellites. It would also tell you who were the pioneer email users in IFIP and how many individual sessions are currently recorded at the IFIP website.

If anyone of you has an interesting story to tell related to the first days of the Internet and IFIP (or covering national experiences) please write to the Delivery Co. and we will post your stories as a collection on the IFIP web site along with the TC 6 30th Anniversary report and related material.

Greetings from Laxenburg,

The Delivery Co.

-------------------------------- Plamen Nedkov Executive Director, IFIP Hofstrasse 3, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria Tel: +43 2236 73616 Fax: +43 2236 736169 http://www.ifip.org/