[TUHS] UUCP mis-history?

[Steve Johnson]

The dates blur in my mind, but I think uucp was around in the Labs
long before V7.  Might not have been distributed, though.

There was a long history in the Bell System of collecting data by
phone -- Model 33 teletypes could be left in a mode where a phone call
could wake it up and turn on the paper tape reader, and the data could
be collected at the other end.  (Remember when long-distance calls
were expensive, but much cheaper at night?).

This reminds me of a story from that era.  One of the mainframe
computers had the ability to place phone calls and a program was run
every night to collect data from far-flung teletypes.   The phone
call would go through, the modems would synchronize, and the data
would be passed.  On day the operators realized that there were two
phone numbers in Nebraska that were getting called every weekday
night, and the numbers were very similar.  They suspected one was a
wrong number, so they listened in on the calls to see which one was
real.   The phone rang in Nebraska at 2am and was answered by a
sleepy man, with whom the modem cheerfully tried to synchronize.  The
man was heard to say "It's all right, Bertha.  It's just that nut
with a whistle again!"

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Horsfall" <dave at horsfall.org>
To:"The Eunuchs Hysterical Society" <tuhs at tuhs.org>
Cc:
Sent:Wed, 8 Mar 2017 14:45:49 +1100 (EST)
Subject:[TUHS] UUCP mis-history?

 http://www.thefullwiki.org/UUCP

 ``UUCP was originally written at AT&T Bell Laboratories, by Mike
Lesk, and 
 early versions of UUCP are sometimes referred to as System V UUCP.''

 Err, it was V7, wasn't it? That considerably predates SysV...

 -- 
 Dave Horsfall DTM (VK2KFU) "Those who don't understand security will
suffer."

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