MERIT

You might have heard… Merit turned 50 years old this year, and we’re pretty proud to have been able to serve our Michigan communities and beyond for such a long time.

2016 saw many other milestone anniversaries in computer science – Star Trek turned 50, email turned 45, Apple turned 40, and Linux turned 25! We thought it might be fun to take a few steps back in time to see what was going on in the world as Merit was getting started, and throughout the years…

• September: Star Trek premiers on TV, inspiring flip phones, transparent aluminum and an uplifting view of future collaboration and diversity.
• November: The Lunar Orbiter 2 was launched to photograph possible landing points on the moon, and Dick Lovell and Buzz Aldren launched a 4 day flight aboard Gemini 12.
• Merit Network is born November 25, 1966!
• On the same day that Merit was founded, the Jimi Hendrix Experience made its London Debut at the Bag O’ Nails Club.

• The first email is sent via ARPANET by Ray Tomlinson as a test message to himself.

• Atari introduces their first product, Pong.

• May 15: The day after the 1st Space Station, Skylab, is launched, the Merit Network is officially dedicated, connecting computers between Michigan State, Wayne State and the University of Michigan for the first time. Two weeks later, the first Skylab crew Kerwin, Conrad and Weitz is launched. Skylab crashed to the earth in 1979, but the Merit Network is still going strong.
• WNPB TV channel 13 in Marquette, MI (PBS) begins broadcasting.

• Apple is founded.

• VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet computer program, debuted in the Apple II.

• Digital Equipment, Intel and Xerox jointly announce the Ethernet network specification.

• The NSF awards Merit, IBM and MCI cooperative agreement to manage and re-engineer the NSFNET Backbone service. A year later, Senator Al Gore would introduce the High-Performance Computing Act to establish support for National Research and Education Network. (NREN)
• European Community formally agrees on the GSM standard for digital mobile telephony, including text messaging (SMS).
• IBM Introduces its Personal System/2 (PS2) machines, allowing the use of a mouse with IBM PCs for the first time.
• PERL is written by Larry Wall, a programming language designed for ease use and quick programming, and has been called “the duct tape of the internet.”
• The Royal Canadian Mint introduces the $1 coin, known as the Loonie.

• Merit, IBM and MCI establish international link to Europe’s EASINET.
• The “WorldWideWeb” is born at CERN laboratory in Switzerland.
• Microsoft ships Windows 3.0 bringing the user-friendly concepts of the Apple Macintosh to the PC.
• Galileo spacecraft flies by Venus on its way to Jupiter.

• Linux is born!

• April 30: the directors of CERN release the source code of World Wide Web into the public domain.

• MichNet (now known as the Merit Network) now has 131 shared dial-in sites; more than 92% of Michigan residences have Internet access with a local phone call.
• Palm Pilot is introduced, which could be connected to a PC or Mac using a serial port to sync both the computer and the Palm. The company called it a “connected organizer.”
• Web users reach 36 million, surpassing the 30 million or so on France’s Minitel. By the end of the 90s, the Web will hit 360 million users.
• The first flip phone, the Motorola StarTAC, goes on sale – thanks, Star Trek!
• NASA’s 1st Mars rover launched from Cape Canaveral.

• Netscape is launched by the Mosaic Communications Corporation.

• Merit is selected to provide dial-in service by all hardware vendors participating in Michigan’s Teacher Technology (laptop) initiative. The network now has 422 attachments at 379 locations.
• The Y2K bug did not cause major problems, due to a massive effort to repair the code beforehand.
• First camera phone is introduced in Japan, with a maximum resolution of 0.11 megapixels and a 256 color display. Photos could be shared wirelessly.
• Sony releases the PlayStation 2 which allowed DVDs to be played as well as game disks, making it an “entertainment console.”
• USB flash drives are introduced, ushering in the end of the floppy disk era.
• President Bill Clinton announces that accurate GPS access would no longer be restricted to the United States military, leading to the rise of handheld navigation devices. Michiganders have had handheld navigation all along.

• Merit launches its first production wireless link, 45 Mbps full duplex loop connecting Southfield and Lawrence Technological University backbone nodes.
• Google goes public.
• World of Warcraft, a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG), comes on-line, allowing players to form social and even romantic connections through the game’s built-in chat function.
• Mark Zuckerberg launches Facebook from his Harvard dorm room.
• Taipei 101, then the tallest skyscraper in the world at 1,670 feet, officially opens.
• Ken Jennings begins his 74 game winning streak on Jeopardy!

• Merit installs a 1Gbps CSME network in the Upper Peninsula giving full 1G redundancy to Merit members in the UP, and a wireless connection across the Soo Locks in Sault Ste. Marie begins transmitting data between Merit and Ontario Research and Innovation Optical Network (ORION).
• Bill Gates steps down as Chairman of Microsoft Corporation to devote his time to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
• The MacBook Air is released, the iPhone 3G is released, and, 4 days later, the original iPhone is discontinued.
• SpaceX launches the first ever private spacecraft, the Falcon 1, into orbit.
• Barack Obama is the first African-American to be elected President of the United States.

• Merit deploys the first Michigan Cyber Range at Eastern Michigan University, site Eagle, and lights the first 900 fiber miles of the REACH-3MC Fiber optic network. Network upgrades are completed in the Upper Peninsula connecting Lake Superior State University, Michigan Technological University and Northern Michigan University at 10Gbps.
• SpaceX Dragon becomes the first commercial spacecraft to dock at the International Space Station.
• The Solar Impulse, a Swiss long-range experimental solar-powered aircraft, completes the world’s first intercontinental flight powered by the sun.
• Raspberry Pi, a credit-card-sized single board computer, is released as a tool to promote science education.
• Facebook acquires Instagram.
• Steven Hawking wins the Fundamental Physics Prize.

• A new, publicly-accessible hub of the Michigan Cyber Range, powered by Merit Network, opens at the Velocity Center at Macomb-Oakland University. The hubs offer a training space for live cybersecurity exercises, utilizing the Cyber Range’s virtual environment known as Alphaville.
• The New York Times declares the end of Moore’s Law.
• IPv6 turns a corner in adoption.
• The Chicago Cubs win the World Series after a 108 year drought, proving anything is possible.

So what will the Next 50 years bring? Humans on Mars? The discovery of another habitable planet outside our solar system? Time travel? Whatever the future brings, Merit is looking forward to keeping our communities connected and advancing our Members’ goals in research, collaboration, education & professional development!