Computer Science Department Celebrates 20 Years on the Net
Jason Togyer, Associate Editor of Pitt Magazine, recently discovered that the Computer Science Department will be celebrating its 20th anniversary of internet presence this October. In an email to Bob Hoffman, our Director of Operations here in the department, Jason states he found this information in Google' 20 year archive of Usenet postings. A search for the earliest mention of the University of Pittsburgh returned a message from Bob in October of 1982. That makes both Bob Hoffman and the Department of Computer Science the oldest internet residents at the University of Pittsburgh. Excerpts of Bob's original Usenet post is printed below, and remember to keep an eye out for Jason's article in Pitt Magazine.
From: pitt!hoffman (pitt!hoffman)
Subject: Announcing new site: pitt
Newsgroups: net.news.newsite
Date: 1982-10-08 05:16:45 PST
Name of site:"pitt"
What the site is all about:This is the University of Pittsburgh Computer Science Department. We are running V7 UNIX on a PDP-11/45.
Name of contact person at site:Robert Hoffman
Systems with whom news articles are exchanged.
(what kind of link, who the neighbor(s) are).News is currently exchanged with idis, Pitt's Interdisciplinary School of Library & Information Science. The link is via a 1200 baud autodialer and we poll idis 4 times a day.
Systems with whom mail is exchanged.
(what kind of link, who the neighbor(s) are, what frequency of connection, whether or not you'll pass outside mail along).Mail, like news, is currently exchanged only with idis when we poll that system.
Willingness (or lack thereof) to connect to new sites that want to join usenet. If you run uucp, tell if new sites can call you, if you will poll them, what your policy is.We are willing to connect to new sites, especially in the Western Pennsylvania area. We have 300/1200 baud dialup modems that support the Bell 103 & 212 protocols as well as the Vadic 3400. Our dial-out modem is currently fixed at 1200 baud but will handle both Bell 212 and Vadic 3400 modes. Our telephone rate structure is relatively independent of distance or time of day, so polling other sites does not present a problem.