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They really are “Pipes”

I wasn’t looking for it, but this might be the oldest reference to electronic communication paths as “pipes”.  This history page of the top 100 posts of the BBS era has a bunch of examples like that.

I presume the history of using the word “pipes” in a communication sense comes from the actual use of pipes to talk between two floors in a building or on a ship.  Even as recently as the 40s, talking throug pipes was more reliable for short range communication than electric lines.

View Comments to “They really are “Pipes””

  1. November 22nd, 2008 at 9:00 pm

    Allison Sellers says:

    I totally missed this post on my last read, it is great.

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