HAPPY BIRTHDAY rec.food.cooking!
Max Hauser
It's the Internet's original public forum on "food, cooking, cookbooks,
recipes and other alimentary effluvia." Countless contributors have come
and gone in 24 years.
*Created as net.cooks 29 January 1982 by Steve Upstill, renamed
rec.food.cooking 1986 (when all original newsgroups were renamed to the
current hierarchy).
A few personal recollections are in message
news:11c4t4n...@corp.supernews.com
currently archived for instance at
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.food.cooking/msg/6bb58536ad9c0f53
First posting (29 January 1982) was message
news:anews.Aucbvax.5987
currently archived (formatted the way most people saw it originally) at
http://tinyurl.com/9cr29
Bill
Thanks for posting this Max! Now lets see...
When was the Internet pretty much in use by colleges and universities
all over the United States? Also, when was it first up and running as
the Pentagon first envisioned it?
Bill
Spitzmaus
> And some are just showing up claiming: "I've been posting here for
> 25 years!"
>
> -sw (who's been here off/on 12... maybe 13 years).
Well, I've been checking in on RFC since my Compuserve days -- and that was
in the early 90s if I recall. Never much of a poster back then, but always
an avid listener/infosponge.
Steve Upstill created Mangia!, my erstwhile favorite cooking software (and
if you're listening, Steve, thank you!!). I was a Mac Marine in them days .
. .
Spitz
--
"Home, James, and don't spare the horses!"
The Bubbo
Oh, I loved Mangia! That was a great program. I really miss it.
--
.:Heather:.
www.velvet-c.com
Step off, beyotches, I'm the roflpimp!
Spitzmaus
> Oh, I loved Mangia! That was a great program. I really miss it.
>
> --
> .:Heather:.
> www.velvet-c.com
> Step off, beyotches, I'm the roflpimp!
Tell me! I was devastated when it "closed shop," but even moreso due to the
loss of most of my recipe files after a serious Mac crash; and no, of COURSE
I hadn't backed up those files, idiot that I was (am!!). Really, I was
inconsolable for days . . .
Spitz
--
"Home, James, and don't spare the horses!"--
Max Hauser
>
> Thanks for posting this message. Is Steve Upstill regular poster on this
> form?
No, he was never very frequent I think. More about Steve inside the June
2005 RFC origins story, which Victor Sack had encouraged (first links in my
previous message). This newsgroup began as one of various ad-hoc
initiatives in the 1980s among people interested in food who'd also been
using the Internet. (More on public access to Internet in the same origins
story, and in another response to follow.) Some of those people were around
Berkeley and had Atlas 150 pasta makers, hence the content of the first
message posted here 24 years ago (again, that's in the origins story). As
mentioned before, being part of the group with Atlas 150s, I was among
guinea pigs and test cooks for those three pasta recipes of Steve's. We
then followed the activity on the new newsgroup in initial years after Steve
launched it -- I still have lots of info on file posted here in the first
decade, when I was a more regular reader, though never much of a heavy
poster.* It is common for people to drift away over years. For instance,
for some years from mid 1980s, Brian Reid was a familiar name to everyone
following food on the Internet (e.g., creating the "Usenet Cookbook" then,
and "alt" newsgroups, which had a food motivation; arguing with me in 1987
that the wine newsgroup needed moderating) but by 1995 (as quoted in the New
York Times) he decided that the useful purpose of the newsgroups was, after
15 years, being supplanted by the then-new HTTP tools. When returning
periodically to familiar newsgoups after years, I've routinely seen (as
early as 1985) whole new sets of "regulars," different on each return.
(Sometimes they will arrive onto long-established newsgroups and post
literally for years, without learning much of the groups' considerable
history pre-them.) However, in unmoderated fora like these it is always the
contributors who make the group, for better and worse.
Steve's work on recipe-formatting software also is in the RFC origins story.
Cheers -- Max
*1983 garlic-press exchange for instance was only partly public. Steve had
argued passionately, when cooking once, that there was no need for handheld
garlic presses to exist. I (who sometimes used them and sometimes not)
disagreed. When responding to a posted query soon afterwards (link below),
I included something on dogma. The aim was true, for when I got an
enthusiastic email from Steve soon after, on a separate matter, it opened
with the side comment "Re Garlic presses: Fuck you, Max," proceeding then
cheerfully and respectfully to its main subject.
Note also that Google's archive has considerable holes in the "rec" groups.
It is especially unrepresentative of the seminal period from late 1980s to
early 1990s (which takes in the Renaming, origin of "alt" groups, etc.).
This is explained within Google's background info about the archive, but
still may not be obvious to a reader who casually searches that archive.
Other archives of early RFC material exist.
Max Hauser
>> . . .
> Thanks for posting this Max! Now lets see...
>
> When was the Internet pretty much in use by colleges and universities all
> over the United States? Also, when was it first up and running as the
> Pentagon first envisioned it?
Mention of "Pentagon" reminds me that there's been some eager myth creation
about the Internet in the last few years (when after-the-fact histories
scrambled into existence, written by people who had seen none of the events
described, nor talked to anyone who had, nor even bothered to remove
telltale errors from the other hasty histories they freely plagiarized).
Part of this entailed sometimes confusing the Internet (originally
"ARPAnet," then "ARPA Internet" after about 1980) with things like the US
military survivable phone/data system AUTOVON/AUTODIN, which has been
described publicly for at least 35 years and is unrelated to the Internet.
Real Internet history, from directors like Cerf and Kahn, or competent
writers who actually researched it, is available here and there, and many
early Internet communications in the form of public exchanges are also
archived as RFCs etc. [End of tirade.]
Here's a draft informal history capsule I was writing for other use. It
might address the query constructively. Disclamer: Draft, may have errors
or typos.
Open discussion fora on the Internet are a little over 25 years old now and
for 60% of that time they were newsgroups like this one [1]. Newsgroups
added a capability to the already-existing Internet [2]. Some of the
earliest newsgroups, in the early 1980s, were immediately popular and remain
so now [3]. You could have access to newsgroups and standard email, from
about 1984 or 85, in the US if you could get to a "dumb" terminal or home
computer with a modem; you'd connect via a local computer service that was
in turn networked [4]. Many patterns of behavior on online fora were
established and documented by the early 1980s, and duly demonstrated by
newcomers ever since [5]. Those who want to read about them have always had
guidance, such as RFC1855 (posted online since 1982 in various versions) or
other introductory information. Google currently hosts one of the larger
public archives at groups.google.com and associated with this archive are
excellent introductory and historical pages. ( "Currently" because
newsgroup messages have proven much more permanent, to date, than any Web
sites. I Am Not Making This Up.) "Web sites" appeared in 1991, here's
Berners-Lee's announcement of them on an existing "alt" newsgroup:
Detail notes:
[1] Begun by Steve Bellovin and associates at UNC-CH and Duke in 1979 more
or less as an offshoot of Internet email (established earlier). Newsgroups
aren't to be confused with ad-hoc "bulletin-board systems" (BBSs), hostable
on any time-shared computer, or with other private online services, all well
established by the early 1970s, accessible to people with dial-up modems and
"dumb" terminals or (later) home computers. What was new from 1979 was the
networking: Computers all over the place communicating. Some of the
development of this occurred off the Internet proper, which at that time was
a limited number of sites using government-subsidized high-speed links.
[Comment on NSF??] But a larger informal world of other dedicated networks,
and countless simple computers with telephone modems, grew around the
official Internet, making the distinction more and more subtle. Epecially
after 1986 as the Internet's high-speed capabilities displaced slower
channels for carrying newsgroups (with the new NNTP protocol).
[2] The Internet itself formed as an effort (Cerf, Kahn, etc.) for diverse
people in the US doing research work on computers to exchange information
using standardized protocols. This was helped by the presence of a common
large government funding source (DARPA) which supported many of the
researchers. By the middle 1970s you could go to many large US universities
and connect between research computers there and at other universities or
sites. Much of this was exploratory and open. Such subtleties as security
and privacy were addressed later.
[3] Such as rec.food.cooking.
[4] This "public access," as it used to be commonly called on the Net,
varied widely in details, software needed, services available, etc. It did
not become of mainstream US interest until after the "www" protocols, and
then the browsers, arrived onto the Internet in 1991 and 1993 respectively,
though substantial communities of online public users were in the US by the
late 1980s, subject of at least one major article in a national magazine at
the time.
[5] Because much of the US online population in the 1980s and early 1990s
was college students, who received accounts on networked computers, system
administrators and newsgroup moderators were accustomed to waves of faux-pas
every September. Reportedly AOL opened up newsgroup access to its
subscribers in 1993; news administrators nicknamed the ensuing era the
"Eternal September."
-- Max Hauser
Melba's Jammin'
"Max Hauser" <maxR...@THIStdl.com> wrote:
> previous message). This newsgroup began as one of various ad-hoc
> initiatives in the 1980s among people interested in food who'd also been
> using the Internet. (More on public access to Internet in the same origins
> story, and in another response to follow.) Some of those people were around
> Berkeley and had Atlas 150 pasta makers, hence the content of the first
> message posted here 24 years ago (again, that's in the origins story). As
> mentioned before, being part of the group with Atlas 150s, I was among
> guinea pigs and test cooks for those three pasta recipes of Steve's. We
Heyy-y-y, I'm still using my Atlas 150. I paid $40 for it in January,
1979. I wonder what that $40 is in today's dollars. :-)
Thank you for the history lesson, Sir.
--
http://www.jamlady.eboard.com, updated 1-27-2006, The Best Dead Spread Yet
Max Hauser
"Melba's Jammin'" in
news:barbs.challer-9C3...@individual.net:
> . . .
> Heyy-y-y, I'm still using my Atlas 150. I paid $40 for it in January,
> 1979.
The hell of it is, some restaurants have leaned hard on that tool, getting
production quantities of fresh rolled-cut pasta out of it for years. It's
an amazing classic machine; rec.food.cooking is merely one of its many
creative offshoots. In my opinion, the Atlas 150 belongs (with the
inevitable Chemex filter coffeemaker and a few other modern inventions) in a
kitchen-tool Hall of Fame.
Garlic presses may be open to debate. ;-)
>
> Thank you for the history lesson, Sir.
Very kind of you, Ma'am.
Cheers -- Max
Max Hauser
>
> "Melba's Jammin'" in
> news:barbs.challer-9C3...@individual.net:
>> . . .
>> Heyy-y-y, I'm still using my Atlas 150. I paid $40 for it in January,
>> 1979.
>
> its many creative offshoots. In my opinion, the Atlas 150 belongs ... in
I priced it at a local small US retailer today. $55. There was a stack of
them. Looked just like mine from 25 year ago.
On the front metal: "Model 150mm Deluxe."
US interest in these efficient little crank-operated roll-and-cut pasta
makers was encouraged by Marcella Hazan's two _Classic Italian Cooking_
books (1973, 1978), which are finely illustrated with sketches, including of
use of the Atlas 150mm.
Probably many people know Hazan's writing, or her son's. She did later
books, but the two _Classic Italian Cooking_ volumes introduced many in the
US (those not lucky enough to grow up with it) to certain northern-Italian
cooking. Just as Julia Child's _Mastering_ books did earlier with French
cooking (1961, 1970), and Hazan was born in the culture she wrote about.
(Child was one in the US who learned from Hazan. She deferred to Hazan's
writing in the 1975 cookbook _From Julia Child's Kitchen._ Which by the way
is the book you saw me with, if you caught the _Biography_ TV program on
Julia Child.)
Cheers -- Max
--------
"One of the most gratifying things about stews is the obstinacy with which
they resist elegant trappings and endure past the life span of all food
fads. They belong to that category of dishes A. J. Liebling called the
`I-beam of cooking;' the kind that will never let down those whose only
criterion for judging food is how good it tastes." -- Marcella Hazan
(1978)
Doug Weller
wrote:
>On Sun, 29 Jan 2006 01:20:29 -0800, "Max Hauser"
><maxR...@THIStdl.com> wrote:
>
>>It's the Internet's original public forum on "food, cooking, cookbooks,
>>recipes and other alimentary effluvia." Countless contributors have come
>>and gone in 24 years.
>
>And some are just showing up claiming: "I've been posting here for
>25 years!"
>
>-sw (who's been here off/on 12... maybe 13 years).
Longer than me, my first post here was in 1994.
Doug
--
Doug Weller --
Doug & Helen's Dogs http://www.dougandhelen.com
A Director and Moderator of The Hall of Ma'at http://www.hallofmaat.com
Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.co.uk
Leila
Max Hauser wrote:
>
> [2] The Internet itself formed as an effort (Cerf, Kahn, etc.) for diverse
> people in the US doing research work on computers to exchange information
> using standardized protocols. This was helped by the presence of a common
> large government funding source (DARPA) which supported many of the
> researchers. By the middle 1970s you could go to many large US universities
> and connect between research computers there and at other universities or
> sites. Much of this was exploratory and open. Such subtleties as security
> and privacy were addressed later.
As a 13 year old in 1975, I went with my mother to the U. of Illinois
(Champaign-Urbana) computer center while she did something or another
to finish up her Ph.D. My kid brother (10) was with us. He began
fooling with a game program, and I discovered that anonymous guys at
Cornell were very eager to flirt with me. It was thrilling. I think the
message system was called PLATO, unless it was SOCRATES.
HOwever even then I was leery of the anonymity of the internet, and I
didn't pursue online chit-chat with strange guys. But I think the
example is telling - male child on first introduction to a computer
network immediately begins writing code to blast aliens, while female
child begins chatting and flirting.
Upon arriving in Berkeley in my early 30s, after a long sojourn in New
York City, I realized i'd truly found my home. THe nexus of gearheads,
food and great bookstores works for me. Some of the nicest people I
know are gearhead foodie bookworms...
Leila
Max Hauser
>
>
> As a 13 year old in 1975, I went with my mother to the U. of Illinois
> message system was called PLATO, unless it was SOCRATES.
PLATO was a conferencing system developed originally at Illinois in the
1960s (according to Peter Salus) and sold commercially by CDC (Control Data
Corp.) I saw it in use elsewhere in 1973: people in far-flung places
playing games, over satellite comm channels I think. It was one of several
independent commercial (non-Internet) computer communication networks
available to subscribers. Salus says that CDC charged $5 million for
software plus $6000 per terminal in 1976. (For anyone who doesn't recognize
the name, CDC and its offshoot Cray Research were long known for making some
of the fastest computers in the world. By no means the largest, though.
From a first-hand report [OJM Smith, Berkeley, 1974] I understand that the
largest computer ever was in Kiev or thereabouts, fully functional as of
1960. It was a mechanical analog computer powered by steam, and it filled a
building. Numerical information traveled as shaft angles [the standard
Bush-type "differential analyzer" format, used wheel-and-disk integrators
I'd guess] and the rotating shafts carrying these angles passed from room to
room, through holes in the wall. Real hardware!
> Upon arriving in Berkeley in my early 30s, after a long sojourn in New
> York City, I realized i'd truly found my home. THe nexus of gearheads,
> food and great bookstores works for me. Some of the nicest people I know
> are gearhead foodie bookworms...
Gearhead foodie bookworms! I like that.
Cheers -- Max