PREV ARTICLE       NEXT ARTICLE       FULL ISSUE       PREV FULL ISSUE      

V4 2001 INDEX       E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 4, Number 46, November 11, 2001, Article 9 FIRST COIN CHAT ROOM? On page B1 of the November 8th Wall Street Journal is an article about Dr. Larry Brilliant and his work against smallpox in India. The last paragraph mentions that "he had a role in founding several online and broadband companies". One of those companies had a numismatic connection. When I worked at Bell Labs in New Jersey during the early 80's, I moonlighted as a consultant for Dr. Brilliant's company, which was based in Ann Arbor, MI at the time. He had hooked up with a couple hackers who ran a bulletin board system on a server in one of their homes. They created an interactive conferencing system with many elements of today's chat rooms and newsgroups. I did testing and commented on user interface design. It was a plain scrolling text interface that you could dial in to via the GTE Telnet network. The company was initially called MarketNet, Inc., and later Network Technologies Inc., or NETI. Larry was a coin collector and knew dealer Joseph Lepczyk, whom I believe became an investor in the firm. Hoping to unseat the standard coin dealer teletype system, they created a system called CENTS for buying, selling, and discussing numismatic items online. CENTS stood for "Complete Electronic Numismatic Trading Systems." It was through the numismatic connection that I became involved. The company later had some sales to groups like AT&T's Legal Dept., which used it as groupware to discuss legal documents. But the system was way ahead of its time and failed, because in those days long before the popularization of the Internet, there were still only a handful of first adopters with PCs and modems having the capability to dial in. We geeks thought it was the bee's knees, but it went nowhere. Larry closed the company, but moved to San Francisco and ended up cofounding The Well with Stuart Brand (of Whole Earth Catalog fame), this time creating the first commercially successful online community. In my library I have copies of the user documentation for the system and a handful of scrolled paper printouts documenting some interactive sessions. In one, Larry Brilliant wrote: "It was a real treat to be able to sign on to the system via satellite from Kathmandu, Nepal. We are making world history with the longest distance coin deal ever ..... wonderful." (August 15th, 1983).

Wayne Homren, Editor

	coinbooks.org Web

The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization 
promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org.

To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor 
at this address: whomren@coinlibrary.com

To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum