[TUHS] TUHS: Maintenance, Succession and Funding

[Noel Chiappa via TUHS]

    > From: Al Kossow

    > There should be international mirrors of the content.

"International" is a minor optimization; "mirror" ('replication', i.e. copies)
is the key concept.

There was a complete copy of all 40 volumes of Diodorus Siculus' magisterial
universal history, Bibliotheca Historica:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_historica

written between 60 and 30 BC, in a library in Constantinople - until 1453.
(In 1453, Constantinople was sacked.) We now only have about 15 volumes, from
about 3 partial copies made before that date, and preserved in libraries in
the West (more here:

  https://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/manuscripts/diodorus_sicilus.htm

for anyone other than me who is interested in such things.)

In other words, it survived for 1500 years - and was only then lost, because
there weren't enough copies. (Other Greek and Roman works survived because
there ha been more interest in them, and multiple copies had made their way
to libraries in the West.)


I suspect things other than sackings (as a Constantinople) are the biggest
threat in this age.

Much of the early work on internet technologies, and the early Internet, was
conducted via email, through a list hosted (I believe) at CNRI. I suspect the
archive of that list has been lost, because (I assume) during a switch from
one generation of machines, to the next, someone decided it was not worth -
or necessary to - keeping it. (If they thought about it at all.)

If it is indeed lost, historians of the future are gnashing their teeth.

	Noel