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Davoud:
> > I am /quite/ familiar with ARPANET, DARPANET, DCA (now DISA, my last
> > assignment before retiring), and the early days of the Internet.
John Savard wrote, inter alia:
> Back in 1982, there probably *was* an Internet, on which some people,
> using PDP-11 computers at major educational institutions in North
> America, were sending E-mail to one another.
It's hard to fix a date for the beginning of the Internet. In 1982,
however, the Internet, such as it was, was still used mainly by the DoD
to talk to its contractors and a few university researchers. It wasn't
so much a university-to-university thing. Also, I never saw a PDP-11
that could function long enough to send an e-mail of any length. And it
wasn't until 1992 that the federal government got behind the /public/
Internet in a big way -- (SR 393, authored by Al Gore, who *never*
claimed to have invented the Internet!)
> But that's hardly here or there. More importantly, in 1982, there was a
> Celestron, and there was a Sky and Telescope magazine to see their ads
> in, and thus some people - if not those stationed in Vietnam - might
> have been aware of other portable telescopes besides Questars.
Or Thailand...
> Celestron had introduced the C5, a 5" telescope, in 1971.
> In January 1982, the Criterion 4000 was intrduced just after Bell and
> Howell bought Criterion.
>
> The Meade 2045 was a 4" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope...
No doubt about any of what you wrote. Because the year you mentioned
most was 1982, I assume you were referring to my previous statement. It
may be worth repeating:
> In 1982, when I bought my Questar Duplex, there was /no/ /other/
> telescope at /any/ /price/ that could do what the Questar could do. I
> was a world traveler at the time; I needed an equatorially mounted
> 'scope that could fit under an airline seat. I needed a 'scope that
> could come out of its beautiful leather case, be polar aligned on its
> equatorial mount and ready for observing in a few minutes. I needed a
> telescope that had better optics than any other amateur telescope,
> regardless of price. I needed a 'scope that could be removed from its
> equatorial mount in mere seconds, mounted on a camera tripod, and used
> for nature photography. I needed a long-distance microscope. I got all
> of those things. I also wanted an instrument that, because of its
> exquisite quality of construction, beauty, and usability, would be
> worth as much 20, 30, 40 years later as it was when it was new.
My thinking is that regardless of where on earth I had lived and how
much access to information I had, I would still have found only the
Questar to suit /my/ requirements. I would argue that /for/ /the/
/requirements/ /that/ /I/ /stated/ the Questar remains the only choice.
Davoud
--
usenet *at* davidillig dawt com
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