Bill Rosoman Dip CS and the Evolution of the Internet

Bill Rosoman Dip CS and Telecommunications
in the 20th Century.
The Evolution of the Internet

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I started my career at Wanganui NZ, my home town, in 1965 as a Junior Lineman for the New Zealand Post Office. It was formally known as the P&T or the Post and Telegraph Department or the Puffed and Tired. I spent time also in Wellington on temporary transfer making lots of money but paying sixty cents in the dollar tax. It was a time were you waited quite happily for three months or more to get the telephone connected and then you had a choice of a black phone, desk type or wall mounted or nothing.

In 1970 while on my big OE in Europe, I was promoted to Tokomaru Bay as a Foreman Outside Plant.

In 1974 Tokomaru Bay the Telephone Exchange went Automatic and I moved to Ruatoria were I was promoted to a Senior Foreman and stayed till being made redundant by Telecom in 1988.

When I arrived in Tokomaru Bay the phones were all manual wind-up jobs. I was the Foreman Faultman or in charge of the two man Telephone installing gang. It was quite a shock to the system!

We were responsible for all the Telephone outside plant of underground cables, telephone poles and wires and radio masts and aerials.

Old Manual Ruatoria Exchange 1976 (Mrs Keelan)

At Tokomaru Bay there was a Postmaster, a Post Office/Post Bank staff of about four people, there was the Telephone Exchange manned 24 hours a day by about ten staff, some part time and the Line staff of a Senior Foreman and Line gang of four or five, an Installing gang of two and one Faultman. The Area in Tokomaru Bay was from south of Tolaga Bay, almost to Whangara and to the North of Waipiro Bay.

That is an area of some 4,000 square kilometres. As the Faultman we had a four wheel drive Landrover but no maps, no radio, no cell phone, no GPS, just a lot of local knowledge.

The telephone exchange behind the Post Office was a manual exchange manned 24 hours a day to answer calls and put them through. Every call had to be put through on a cord, one end plugged into person making the call the other end plugged into the number to call and a switch flicked to ring the phone. And of cause there were the notorious party lines with four to six households on one line. Some of the poles and wires went for thirty kilometres or more to places like Huiarua Station on the Mata Road. It could be a nightmare when you had a fault on the line and a lot of walking the hills to find the problem. The only real aids were local knowledge, a pair of binoculars, some basic testing equipment and a sturdy pair of boots.

Ruatoria NEAX Automatic Telephone Exchange 1977.

If I wanted to call my parents in Wanganui, I had to wind the handle and get the Operator at Tokomaru Bay, they would put you through to Ruatoria who would manually ring Napier who would ring Palmerston North who could dial my parents on an automatic line to Wanganui. Quite a mission as most of the way it was just a pairs of copper wires (200lb/mile) on two cross arms on poles and that is if all the operators were talking to each other and not having a tiff, or were not busy. There was only a handful of circuits from Tokomaru Bay to Ruatoria.

In 1974 when the telephone Exchange at Tokomaru Bay went Automatic we were transferred to Ruatoria as they closed the depots at Tokomaru Bay and Tikitiki and built a new one in Waiomatatini Road, Ruatoria. There was a staff of up around a dozen. One Overseer, One Senior Foreman and four man line gang, two Foreman faultmen, one Foreman and Lineman installing gang, one storeman/cleaner. There was also a large staff at the Post Office and Manual Telephone Exchange.

The Ruatoria Telephone Exchange went Automatic in 1977, I remember connecting the Lotto at the local four square grocery store as it was the last Lotto to be connected in New Zealand as I understood.
Ruatoria Phone Book



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My Telecom Reference                                                                                                                 Early Email (1989)

In the 1960-75 era the IT industry consisted of wind up telephones, wires and poles. It was mainly manual work digging holes and putting in poles and wire, using horses in difficult situations.

If you were rich or important you would have a Telex Machine (these died in the 80s) and later a Fax Machine. The biggest use of Telecommunications apart from the phone was sending and receiving Telegrams, especially as they were free to staff.

Ruatoria Line Depot 1970s

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There was some Radio Communications via CB (Citizen Band), Amateur Radio, Shipping and Trucks etc. and Shortwave Radio.

I listened to shortwave radio from the 1960s to the 1990s

This is a QSL Card from the Voice of America.

My Barlow-Wadley Shortwave Receiver.

There were computers as such but they were very large IBM mainframes which took up several floors of office space, they were only available to large companies and governments. I used to work on these big mothers in Wellington supplying them with links to the outside world. IBM famously said there was only room for half a dozen computers in the world.

The Post Office Computer at Herd Street Wellington as I understand just did the pay for 35,000 Post Office staff, took up a whole floor and they dug a big hole in the yard to bury a water tank and diesel tank for standby power etc. It was huge and limited in it's application.

In 1983 I brought a Sinclair ZX81 computer which plugged into the back of a B&W TV for a screen and into a tape recorder for storing data on cassette tapes, the computer had a memory of 16kb which was upgraded to 64kb. The ZX81 used BASIC as its language.

Sinclair SX81

I then brought a Sinclair Spectrum which was the second mass computer ever made. Next was a laptop of the XT variety, then a 286 upgraded to a 386. I then had a 486 notepad and then a Pentium 75mhz upgraded to 40mb of RAM and a 3gb Hard Drive. In 2000 I brought a 266mhz Notepad, and also used a dual floppy XT Laptop running on Solar Power (twelve volts).

I purchased my first modem for the Spectrum, from Exeter in England as they were very expensive in New Zealand. It was a 300bps modem and the only person I could communicate with was Herby Kaa the then dentist at Te Puia Springs, some 10km, as he was the only other person I new had a computer and modem.

The first way to get on-line was with Bulletin Boards. These consisted of Computer Enthusiasts setting up a Bulletin Board for others to access via a modem. There was a guy at the Bank of New South Wales (Westpac) who set-up a Bulletin Board in Gisborne. I used to dial into it by making a toll call and loging on. You could access some software, forums and could send and receive email. This Bulletin Board would contact another in say Auckland or Sydney say once in every 24 hours and exchange information. This would then bounce around till reaching its destination. So an email and reply could take several days to get there and back to you. Of cause all this was in DOS with primitive programs. I remember one of the first email programs was called SLMR (Silly Little Mail Reader). We also used Software called Prism to communicate with Bulletin Boards. You had to a bit of programming to get things to happen. It was not very user friendly. You could transfer files using protocols like Kermit, easy for geek types.

The second major on-line event was called Videotex were I could view the weather, news headlines and my bank balance with Westpac. You could only look at stuff on-line, you could not reply and the screen of cause was Green or Amber. Videotex was run I think by the Government Computer people. I forget what they were called.

Then there was Telecom’s Starnet and a Database in America (McDonald Douglas Super Computer) that required the computer to dial 30 digits to get on-line Now we mostly know about the Internet. My first email address was rde002 and was on Starnet. Starnet and Pacnet could cost round $200 per month.

To access Starnet you had to use Pacnet. So you required an account for each. Pacnet was an access gateway to many databases and computer systems like Starnet.

The 1990s I had Intel Pentium computers, with colour and multimedia capabilities so necessary in today’s IT world. Windows 3.1 (which came on about 18 3.5” Floppy Disks) We had a 14kbs then 28kbs, then 33kbs and finally 56kbs modems and Dial up Internet connection and e-mail addresses. We could finally multi-task.

The Internet as we know it in 2009 came in the 1990s. First I used to access CompuServe via a toll call and then log onto CompuServe at many cents per minute. I once had a monthly bill of $500 and was usually in the hundreds of dollars. I made a site at Geocities www.geocities.com/leftfieldnz in 1995 and acquired a Yahoo email at the same time leftfieldnz@yahoo.co.uk

I next managed to get an email address through the Tairawhiti Polytechnic who had a pair of wires and a 64kb link to Waikato University who were the gateway for New Zealand Internet at that time.

Finally we got access to the Internet proper via dial up on a 9.6kbs Modem and an 0800 number.

At first people could not get there heads around having modern 24 hour a day communications. In Tokomaru Bay there was classic examples of the misunderstanding of technology. From the Post Office Union saying we had to fight and stop technology if we wanted to keep our jobs. I said to the Union guy, that if you have flown all the way from Wellington to tell us that you are wasting your time, technology is going to happen. They made Telecom make the Telephone Jacks sealed, so you had to get a technician in move, replace or install a telephone.

The locals also called a public meeting to stop Westpac, the last bank in Tokomaru Bay from closing. I was the only one saying close the bank as we have technology like the Internet and EFTPOS cards and they were all saying no we need to keep the bank open. It was only open half a day a week anyway so a waste of time. Westpac closed and the locals used EFTPOS.

I went to the Potaka School in remote East Cape and gave them a demo of the Internet, I asked a guy his car registration number and had a look on-line and could tell him he owed money on the car, he said how do you know that. I said you could now read the paper on-line when you want instead of waiting for the bus in the late afternoon to deliver the paper.

On another occasion I went to Pewhairangi's as Cody wanted a printer driver. I put my laptop down in the middle of the lounge and plugged in my laptop to the power and the phone line, she said, what are you doing and I explained I am using the Internet to get a driver for the printer. I installed the driver and She was impressed! Before this you had to ring the manufacturer or importer and plead with them to send you the driver on a floppy disk.

I was working at Nga Roimata Training Centre and Wiki used to pay the wages by cheque, you the had to bank the cheque and wait five working days for the money to be available, or as Wiki used to do, drive 40km to Tolaga Bay cash the cheque and put into your account. I fought to get ASB Desktop Banking and it was brilliant. I would work for the day, give Wiki an invoice, they would pay me on-line and then I could walk straight to the shop and access the money via EFTPOS.

Also at Nga Roimata, we wanted to order some educational material from a catalogue we had. I made the order out then rang the people concerned in Auckland to find out there bank details so I could make a direct credit to their account and then fax the order through to them. Well the sales person could not handle that. I was put through to the accountant who said their bank details were confidential. I said can you shop 24 hours a day on-line and do all the things the Internet has to offer, it took him awhile to figure out what I was saying but in the end gave me the account details. He said but how will we know it is from you I said we will have our name on it and it will be for $256.11 or what ever the amount was. He said this will be a first, I said welcome to the 20th Century.

My late friend Kevin Makin was a researcher and suffered from epilepsy. If he wanted information from the National Library. He had to hitch or take a bus to Gisborne, fly to Wellington, access the Information and then return, taking 2-3 days and costing hundreds of dollars. Now we could do research and contact people as well as do things like on-line banking from Tokomaru Bay. His Company was Research Design hence my email rde002 on Starnet. We lived about 1km apart. One Sunday I was doing a document and wanted Kevin to have a look at it. Normally I would have put it onto a Floppy Disk taken down and got Kevin to have a look. But I rang him and said look the weather is nasty will you check your email and I will send the document to you for you to look at, edit and return to me. Marvellous, but how we take it for granted in the 21st Century.

I have little formal IT qualifications and have learnt computers mostly by sitting down and pressing buttons, reading books, asking questions and general perseverance.

However in 2003 I obtained a NZQA National Diploma in Computing stream Support Level 5.

I have been involved in the running of Internet sites at www.webng.com/leftfieldnz and www.webng.com/writernz These sites are housed in the USA. You might say that is my office.

The latest project in 2009 is www.creativekiwis.com a website to market some of my Books and DVDs etc.

I am also involved in writing software, computer training and my speciality is telecommunications and in particular the Internet.


I was self-employed as a Computer Consultant from 1988 to 2002. Mainly in the Gisborne/East Coast region of New Zealand. Currently I live at Hamilton in the Waikato.

I believes that IT is one of the few industries where age, sex or knowledge and skills are not a barrier. Technology and its uses are only limited by the imagination and willingness to learn of the user.

Asus Z53J Notepad 2008

I now have had several years using Linux OS in particular Kubuntu Linux. It is all free and runs well. It does not get viruses or spyware and all the programs are free.

I also brought an old laptop and put Puppy Linux on it, it is fantastic. Puppy Linux basic is only 98mb and will run on any old computer. Either running from a CD or installed on a hard drive, you have all the basic to get up and at them, even the internet and all.


I have an American web-pal who tells me we have been corresponding for 12 years. That has been very nice.

A not so typical set-up in 2009 is at my Nieces place at Glen Massey in the Waikato. They have Satellite TV (Free to Air) and Satellite Internet as well as Solar, Wind and Diesel for Power. The Internet cost $2700 to install and $69 per month for a 2gb data allowance.

Mind you it can be a pain, as the Internet is only available if there is power. They use cell phones for immediate communication and Internet VOIP like Skype for long distance calls.

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2009 Acer 5920g Notepad.

BTW, Took this Photo with my Cell Phone and transferred the Photo to my notepad Via Bluetooth.

Dual 1.8ghz Intel Chips, 2gb RAM, Double Layer DVD/Blueray, 3D Graphics, etc.

You know wonder in the 21st Century how we managed before Broadband Internet or Dial up Internet.

All this has happened in my brief 60 years on the planet!

Currently I am doing the night shift at a Petrol Service Station in Hamilton. Well at least it pays the Bills LOL!

April 2009