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The first Christmas tree on the Internet
- To: IETF List <ietf@CNRI.Reston.VA.US>
- Subject: The first Christmas tree on the Internet
- From: Paul Robinson <PAUL@tdr.com>
- Date: Sun, 12 Dec 1993 01:50:26 -0500 (EST)
- Newsgroups: tdr.paul.private.mail
- Reply-To: Paul Robinson <PAUL@tdr.com>
- Sender: ietf-request@IETF.CNRI.Reston.VA.US
Since there's been a lot of talk of accessing light bulbs on the Internet...
Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1993 15:12:16 -0800 From: Brendan Kehoe <brendan@cygnus.com> Subject: the first Christmas tree on the Internet
CHRISTMAS TREE LIGHTS UP VIA THE INTERNET
Dec. 7, 1993 - Employees of Cygnus Support in Mountain View, California, discovered when they came to work today that they can light the company Christmas tree without leaving their computer consoles. Engineers at this four-year-old software startup last night reprogrammed the company's internal computer network to enable users of the network to issue commands to the decorations on the tree.
A Cygnus engineer sits in front of his Unix XWindows workstation and brings up a windowed, mouse-drive application called "xmastree". Clicking the mouse over the correct gadget turns on lights on the seven-and-one-half foot tall evergreen in the lobby of Cygnus Headquarters. Clicking the mouse over another gadget turns other decorations, including bubble lights and musical bells, on or off.
Currently, only users on Cygnus's internal network can actually control the Christmas tree, but anyone at any Internet site anywhere can discover the current status of the Cygnus christmas tree by issuing the command, "finger xmastree@cygnus.com". The command will report whether the lights, bubbles, and bells are on or off.
Cygnus engineers, when not playing with their Christmas toys, write and maintain software tools such as compilers, tools which enable programmers to create new computer programs. Since many of Cygnus' customers are engaged in embedded systems programming, Cygnus uses X-10 controllers to enable and disable target single board computers during testing. "Cygnoids" Jason Molenda and Brian Smith extended the principle to the Christmas tree this year and added the spiffy graphical user interface called "xmastree" for the amusement of their fellow employees.
The cost of the decorations plus control hardware used on the tree itself (exclusive of the computers on the Cygnus network) was about $100.
For further information, contact Cindy Jepsen, Cygnus Support, 1937 Landings Drive, Mountain View, CA (415) 903-1400 (email cindy@cygnus.com).
-30-
--
Brendan Kehoe
brendan@cygnus.com
Cygnus Support, Mountain View, CA +1 415 903 1400
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