Peter,

On Wed, 4 May 2005 21:34:03 +0300 (IDT), Peter wrote:

> On Tue, 3 May 2005, Ake Hedman wrote:
> 
> > Strangely IIRC hypertext was a big British thing.  I 
had a company that sold 
> > software from 1984-1992 and  I can't count how many 
hypertext application 
> > writers  from GB who approached us as a possible 
distributor. We sold some 
> > packages I now don't remember the name of.  In that 
light Sir Tim 
> > Berners-Lee's   
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee> work is 
> > understandable and that it was destined to be 
someone British that would come 
> > up with this. I don't know if it was written by a 
Britt but I think that 
> > there was some hypertext application on the Apple 
machines that was quite 
> > successful at the time.
> 
> Didn't the French already have the Minitel system by 
then ? And there 
> was something called something else in Britain ? Here 
is a relevant 
> link:
> 
> http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/carlson/history/TELETEL.HTM

Funny you should mention that - we did a "Viewdata" 
front-end to the order processing system that we had in 
the '80s, so that customers could dial in (via Prestel) 
and place new orders and check on the progress of 
existing ones.  It was crude but it had some success, 
and it really annoyed some of our competitors because we 
didn't charge the customers for the privilege, which the 
others wanted to do.

Ah, those were the days - we did a lot of pioneering 
then, including installing LANs (ARC, later renames 
Acrnet) about 25 years ago.

Cheers,



Howard Winter
St.Albans, England


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