HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TELECOM DIGEST!
This publication was founded on August 21, 1981, and that makes it forty years old today.
I'm sending this out after Midnight, so that it will appear in reader's inboxes, on Usenet, and in the "Digest" version of the Telecom Digest all on the same date, no matter how our publication gets to you.
As a technician at New England Telephone & Telegraph Co., I helped to install the first "High Speed" ananlog lines between the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at M.I.T., and Bolt Beranek and Newman, the first Internet Service PRovider. I feel I'm entitled to say that I was "Present at the Creation" of the Internet as we came to know it, and I worked in Panel, #1 Crossbar, #5 Crossbar, and ESS offices, along with "T" carrier equipments from the "D1" to the "D4" banks, and on L5 Carrier, Microwave, IMTS Mobile, and Ship-To-Shore radio systems: I welcome comments and remembrances from others who worked on the earlier software, hardware, and protocols which made today's telephone and Internet networks possible.
On this special day, let's hear from all the old hands about the Digest's past, what you think the future holds, and thoughts about how we'll get there.
I look forward to the years to come. I've been the Moderator here since 2007, and with any luck, I'll make it to the Digest's 50th.
Bill