The TEIES project was developed on IBM VM/CMS (System 360) in the C language and supplemented with REXX by CCCC at NJIT beginning around 1985 and concluding in 1990. This repository archives the code from that project when it was shut down near the end of 1990.
Development began on IBM 4361 in 1985, a full computational platform donated by IBM Reseach (IBM Palo Alto Scientific Center). The project also later utilized the IBM 9370, a System/370 successor to the 4300 series, until the project demise in 1990.
Amoung the many unique characteristics of this project was the use of the C language on the IBM VM/CMS platform, thanks to the availability of the Watcom-C compiler.
TEIES is an anacronym for Tailorable Electronic Information System. It was a project initiated in 1985 to succeed the Electronic Information System (EIES), one of the very first Computer Mediated Communication Systems (CMCS) ever developed. The project was led by Dr. Murray Turoff and Dr. Starr Roxanne Hiltz. Turoff and Hiltz authored The Network Nation, a book that is considered the defining document and standard reference for the field of CMCS. EIES was developed as a research project for CMCS to research and discover how CMCS could be used to optimize human group communication and realize the ideas written in The Network Nation.
EIES was a public and private funded research project at Computerized Conferencing and Communications Center (CCCC) at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). Development began in 1974 and was performed on Interdata (Perkin-Elmer) 7/32 and 3230 minicomputer systems programmed in FORTRAN and Assembly. At one point in its development the EIES source code was a stack of punch cards 3 feet high. EIES was a success, gaining notoriety and interest in education, scientific research, business, and government. There were constant development efforts to keep pace with advancing technology, increasing functional requirements, and a growing user base. Above all, EIES was research, and Turoff and Hiltz were constantly pushing the bar with what could be achived by networking people into groups on a computing platform. This was the late 70's and early 80's, there was no Internet, and high-speed digital networking was ASCII characters flying over acoustic coupled modems at 300 and 1200 BAUD.
In 1984 the ability for EIES to keep pace with the demands of advancing research were too high: its computing platform and its code base were all antiquated. The research team created new requirements and sought out funding from a varity of interested public and private institutions. Out of these new requirements two development tracks were decided: TEIES, a solution targeting the IBM VM/CMS family of minicomputers, and EIES-2, which targeted Unix.
Development was conducted from 1984 until October 1990 when it was halted due to unmet deliverables and lack of funding, and CCCC shifted all resources to the Unix-based EIES-2 project.
- An Overview of research activities in Computer Mediated Communications from 1976 to 1991
- Turoff, Murray, J. Foster, S. R. Hiltz, and K. Ng, (1989), The TEIES Design and Objectives: Computer Mediated Communications and Tailorability, Proceedings of the 22 Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Vol. III, 403-411. Washington, IEEE Computer Society. Reprinted in Nahouraii and Petry, Object-Oriented Databases, IEEE Computer Society Press, 1990.
- Turoff, Murray, Foster, John, et. al., Tailorable Electronic Information Exchange System (TEIES) CMC System Design Specifications, IBM-NJIT Joint Study Report, 1986.
The following names are the contributors to this project, in alphabetical order.
- Rana Ajaz-Ur-Rehman
- Anders Bandholm
- Pamela Cham
- Samir Chopra
- John Foster
- Heidi E. Harting
- Starr Roxanne Hiltz
- Gurinder (Sal) Johar
- Tanmay S. Kumar
- Fen-Chung Kung
- Steve Kuo
- Kenneth Liang
- Marty Lyons
- Ashish K. Mehta
- David W. Morris
- Stephen Muccione
- Kenneth Ng
- Siva Raparla
- Anoop K. Srivastava
- Murray Turoff
- Nestor R. Voronka
- Kevin J. Walsh
- Ing-Long Wu