Efforts Began in 1993

In 1993, a group formed to bring Internet to the Winchester/Frederick County area and to make it available to all. DMAC wanted to end up with a homepage on internet.

In 1994, a Unix bulletin board system (bbs) was installed at the Handley Library with thought that it would access internet. In September of 1994, DMAC obtained an electronic mail (e-mail) address and world wide web access on internet.

The bbs approach had to be dropped because it would require the library to add man hour commitments to the bbs even if volunteers did the actual work.

Thus the approach for the library was changed. A simple single Windows 3.1 based pc with Internet access was installed in the library reference area. No man hour commitment needed to be made for this approach.

In 1995, three new providers of Internet access services came to Winchester. The price structure of internet services rapidly changed. One of the new vendors offered to set up a home page and obtain a node name for DMAC by Thanksgiving, 1995.

Granting of an internet node name took until February, 1996. The node name dmac-unibase.com arrived. Now e-mail can be sent to DMAC people at this address. The Home Page will be soon -- they say.

Why tell this story? Over and over again we at DMAC try to tell our clients that implementing new technology takes far more time and money and produces different results than is planned. A start-early, go-slow approach is almost always the best and safest approach.

Currently, we at DMAC think the InputAccel Document Operating System provides a start-early, go-slow approach to OCR/ICR technology.