Honey, I Finished The Internet – small dead animals

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I invented the internet for this?
Well, I didn’t exactly invent the internet, but back in 1971, I did help implement a file to file transfer system in Ottawa for a department of the federal government. It would transfer the contents of 1/2 inch magnetic tape files from one computer to another over a standard telephone line at 2400 bits/sec. These were mainframe computers, and to implement the project we had to write everything from the code that interfaced with the hardware (known as driver code today) to the error checking code and the human interface (handshaking) code.
The operator would mount a tape with files to be sent, then dial up the other end and establish the data connection. Then the data transmission program would be started and the local operator would communicate with the remote operator using the computers operator console. There was a handshake procedure that sent information from one end to the other about the coming data transmission. When all was in order, the data transmission began and carried on until the file was sent and verified, and then the whole procedure would start again for the next file.
Nothing that new or innovative as others were by this time also implementing data communications between mainframe computers. But there were no universal generally available systems for this particular computer system and so we would custom build applications like this whenever required.
And now anyone can initiate a file transfer with a single click of a mouse.