Prestel
In 1983, the Prestel messaging service known as “Prestel Mailbox” was launched, initially hosted on the computer known as "Enterprise", and later available from all IRC computers by means of a centralised messaging computer known as "Pandora". This facility extended the original day one concept of “Response Frames” whereby an end user could send a message back to the IP who owned the page via special pages, for example to order goods or services. The user’s name, address, telephone number, and date could be added automatically to the message when the IP set up the response frame by means of codes which triggered extraction of key data from the users account held on the IRC computer. Initially response frames were ingathered by an IP from each IRC individually, but later the facility to collect messages from all IRCs at the UDC from where they could be ingathered centrally was implemented, and with the introduction of Mailbox, they could be retrieved from any IRC.
List of Internet pioneers
Donald Davies (1924–2000) independently invented and named the concept of packet switching in 1965 at the United Kingdom's National Physical Laboratory (NPL). In the same year, he proposed a national data network based on packet switching in the UK. After the proposal was not taken up nationally, during 1966 he headed a team which produced a design for a local area network to serve the needs of NPL and prove the feasibility of packet switching. In 1967, a written version of the proposal entitled "NPL Data Network" was presented by a member of his team (Roger Scantlebury) at the ACM conference in Gatlinburg. The paper described how equipment ("nodes") used to transmit signals ("packets") would be connected by electrical links to re-transmit the signals between and to the nodes, and interface computers would be used to link node networks to so-called time-sharing computers and other users. The interface computers would transmit multiplex signals between networks, and nodes would switch transmissions while connected to electrical circuitry functioning at a rate of processing amounting to mega-bits. Scantlebury suggested packet switching for use in the ARPANET; Larry Roberts incorporated it into the design and sought input from Paul Baran as well. Davies gave the first public demonstration of packet switching in 1968 and built the local area NPL network in England, influencing other research in the UK and Europe. The NPL network followed by ARPANET were the first two networks in the world to use packet switching. In 2012, Davies was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame by the Internet Society.