Greg wrote:
I was hoping, though, to find a much older text version of "Alice". Bowerbird stated his belief that Michael Hart keypunched Alice a lot earlier than 1990/91, but so far I have not found that version, assuming it was distributed and ended up in some BBS or online archive.
I got my first copy of Alice via email in about 1988, or possibly a little earlier (it was no later than June of 1988, because I got it while still at SUNY Albany).
Thanks! This is useful information. I'll re-search in Google and see if someone archived this older version. The version 1.1 I found is dated (copyrighted) 1990, so I assume the version you had may have been the original version 1.0. You might ask Michael to think back when he first placed Alice online. It's a very historical fact. Besides the KJV of the Bible, did Michael post to the Internet before 1990 any other classic works? (I'm not referring to the nine political documents which form PG text #1-9, but more recognized book works like "Alice".)
Unfortunately the file I got is lost, among some other old emails on 9-track tapes that didn't make one of my institutional transitions.
Understood. I saved very little from the late 1980's when I first got online (Usenet and various BBS).
It was the same (if earlier) Millenium Fulcrum edition that was in the PG collection, though at that time I had never heard of PG.
Was the early GUTNBERG mailing list archived as well? When was that list formed? The first mention I see of GUTNBERG is January 1990. I don't believe Google has it archived, unfortunately. That would be a treasure trove of information on the early days of PG, and probably will mention, in passing, things that happened before GUTNBERG was started. Thanks again. Jon