🚀 go-pugleaf

On Saturday, April 7, 2018 at 4:13:53 PM UTC-4, Lynn Wheeler wrote:
> S/360 announce 4/7/1964, 54yrs
> http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/mainframe/mainframe_PR360.html
> 
> ... and from 34yrs ago
> 
> we had regular Friday's after work and one of the discussions was that
> most of middle management and executives were computer illiterate
> ... and could we create something that would attract them to using
> computers. We came up with the idea of doing online telephone books. Jim
> Gray would write the lookup application and I would create the
> collection and formating process ... but neither of us would use more
> than 2weeks of our time (note this was later picked up by and shipped by
> PROFs). One of the hardest problems were site security that believed
> computer/soft copies of paper phone books violated security.  From long
> ago and far away:
[snip]

That is strange that something like an internal telephone
directory would be a security threat, especially years ago
when computer access was more tightly controlled than now.

Years ago my PPOE moved its internal phone book to the VM machine.
Was a lot easier to use.  However, all it had was the alpha listing
of individuals; it did not have dialing instructions nor listings
by department.

Sadly, today, it's difficult to reach many companies by telephone,
even tiny ones, because everyone has a computer front end and the
caller is forced to wade through multiple menus.