History of Usenet and statistical info..

[Ozan Yigit]

For a research paper I am working on, I need to find out the
following:
o History: How did usenet get started, who started it,
which sites were the initial "nodes", reasons for
its establishment.

o Statistical data as far back as possible, preferably
broken-down by years for the following
- Number of nodes
- Number of newsgroups
- Volume (Meg/month, Meg/Newsgroup/Month, whatever..)
[Rick@Seismo: Are u there ?]

o Any other important details about usenet, such as political
control (if any) exercised by backbones, AT&T, U.S. Government
etc.

I would appreciate all other references, contacts, references or copies
of other published or unpublished research into usenet. Prehistoric
news articles from net.news or net.news.group would also be of
great interest.

oz
--
The best way to have a Usenet: [decvax|ihnp4]!utzoo!yetti!oz
good idea is to have a Bitnet: oz@[yusol|yuyetti].BITNET
lot of ideas. Phonet: [416] 736-5053 x 3976

[re...@apollo.uucp]

Here's the oldest map I could find. I also have a map of the known uucp
universe from roughly the same time. It has 345 entries.

USENET Logical Map
June 1, 1981
!- Uucp links
: Berknet links
@ Arpanet links

pdp
(Misc) ! (NC) (Misc)
decvax sii reed phs--unc--grumpy duke34 utzoo cincy teklabs
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
! +--+----+-----+-+--+-------------+-------+------+ !
! ! !
! duke !
! ! !
! +------+---+-----------------------+--------+ !
! ! ! ! ! !
ucbopt ! hocsr--mhtsa----research allegra harpo-----chico
: ! ! ! !
ucbcory ! ! eagle ihnss vax135 (Bell Labs)
(UCB) : ! ! ! ! !
ucbvax--++----------+--+--+-----+--+------+--------+
: @ ! ! ! (Silicon Valley)
ucbarpa @ (UCSD) sdcsvax ! menlo70--hao
: @ sdcattb-----+ ! ! !
ucbonyx @ +-----ucsfcgl sytek sri-unix
@ phonlab-----+
cca-unix sdcarl

[o...@yetti.uucp]

Many thnx to those of you who have responded, with references
and ideas. I seem to have few good leads so far, and more will
always be appreciated.

Pretty shortly, I will post a detailed questionarre to the net,
to find out more about the way people interact with the network
and its effects in general with respect to more conventional forms
of communication.

The paper resulting from my research will be available to anybody
who wants it. More details about the nature of this paper will be
posted along with the questionarre. Expected completion time
is Feb. 1987.

sincerely... oz