#7.2: A short e-mail exchange with Rupert Lane (July 2020)

posted Jul 2, 2020, 9:56 AM by Jeff Ogden   [ updated Jul 3, 2020, 10:11 AM ]
From: Jeff Ogden
Subject: Hello
Date: June 30, 2020 at 10:57:32 AM EDT
To: Rupert Lane

I don't think we've been in direct contact before. I just want to say thank
you for your work creating your try-mts.com site.

I am curious. How did you learn about MTS and what got you started
on creating try-mts.com?

I, myself, used MTS starting as an undergraduate student at the University
of Michigan in 1969. I earned money for school in the early 1970s with several
part-time temporary student jobs using MTS. I became a regular staff member
at the UM Computing Center in 1974. I eventually retired from the University
of Michigan in 2005 after working at the Computing Center, the Merit Network,
and at the UM Medical Center. 

  -Jeff

From: Rupert Lane
Subject: Re: Hello
Date: July 2, 2020 at 7:24:07 AM EDT
To: Jeff Ogden

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the kind words! I have no real-life exposure to MTS, just an
interest in computer history. Back in 2014 or so I took the Coursera
course "Internet History, Technology, and Security" which mentions Merit
and MTS. I had not heard of MTS before so googled around, found the
Michigan Terminal System Archive (kudos on such a well organised site)
and got it running quickly. I was intrigued by the system and thought it
would be an interesting project to investigate further from a
contemporary point of view - both as a writing exercise and also maybe
to inspire some other people to look at MTS, as I think it should be
wider known.

A little bit about me: was born in England, studied electronic
engineering at the University of London in 1989 (using a mix of PCs and
Sun workstations - so I just missed the timesharing era) then worked as
a C and then C++ programmer in various places. I am currently an
engineering manager for indeed.com and am based in Japan.

If there's anything I could do to help MTS do let me know.

Rupert

On Jul 3, 2020, at 12:54 AM, Mike Alexander wrote:

Thanks for forwarding this. He was at the University of London the same year I was.

     Mike
[Mike spent a year working in the UK in 1989, six months at UCL and six months at the University of Newcastle (one of the eight sites that developed and used MTS).]

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