Ever hear of Nathaniel Rochester?

[Titan]

I had an interesting morning. I was coming back on a trip through Oxford, Maine this morning, waiting for a shoe store to open, when I decided to check out a small gem and mineral shop off route 26 while I waited. Crystals are starting to turn out to be a new hobby of mine which I know nothing about.

The shopkeeper is mid 50's or 60s, an expert on geology who tells me he's done excavations all over the world. I tell him I'm a computer guy and he tells me his father was Nathaniel Rochester. At first I kinda didn't believe him because he was kindof abrasive, definitely a scienctist. But I verified the history he told me online, how Nat was the head guy for making IBM's first digital computer in the 50s, the system 701. His son does look like him from the old photo I've dug up.

The one story he told me was that his dad kinda invented the internet. He claims Nat was trying to reach a colleague in Britain who wouldn't answer his phone, and at the time, they were sending computer code via sattelite. So Nat sent a text message to his friend telling him to pick up his phone. The claim is that this was the first "computer-to-computer text message to be sent by sattelite." This I haven't been able to verify. He went on to say that he thought this was a good idea to use in general, and it turned out the military liked the idea so much they bought it from IBM and that started the whole internet in secret. Not sure if this is verifiable but an interesting story nonetheless. Nat would be the type to do this as he had a strong background in systems and signals.

But anyways his son is an accomplished geologist and we had a long conversation where a lot of things went over my head, reminds me of talking to professors. He sells some stuff on ebay under the id ANTIKTOME.

 

[icarus4586]

The Nathaniel Rochester that I've heard of is the founder of Rochester, NY, which is where I live.

 

[Oblivionaire]

You do know they had teletype for deaf people long before the internet right? What year does he claim this first text message via satellite occured? I bet teletype over regular phone lines was before that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype

"...The teleprinter evolved through a series of inventions by a number of engineers, including Royal E. House, David E. Hughes, Edward Kleinschmidt, Charles Krum and Emile Baudot...."

No mention of Rochester there.

 

[kenji4life]

you're mis-reading the thread

 

[Yoshi911]

yes this is correct information. I had a teacher who worked with the military as a computer techie around then and he told me the same story, except didnt mention Nathaniel Rochester's name.

 

[CanOWorms]

Complete BS. The internet was invented by the ancient inhabitants of Atlantis.

 

[SuperFungus]

I was pretty shure that the internet, at a fundamental level, grew out of packet radio. The guys who where doing that early on came up with the idea of breaking files up into packets and then verifying those packets since the over air systems they where using would often drop a bit or two and the whole file transfer would be screwed up. I remember because I was messing around with a little "pocket TNC" i picked up at a ham fest around 3 or 4 years ago. Anyways I doubt any single person or group can claim responsibility for creating the internet.