science

The Big Electric Cat

The Big Electric Cat is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Big Electric Cat rather than just read about it. In short: The Big Electric Cat, named for an Adrian Belew song, was a public access computer system in New York City in the late 1980s, known on Usenet as node dasys1. Based on a Stride Computer brand minicomputer running the UniStride Unix variant, the Big Electric Cat (sometimes known as BEC) provided dialup modem users with text terminal-based access to Usenet at no charge.

Key takeaways

The Big Electric Cat belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Big Electric Cat to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Big Electric Cat from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Big Electric Cat, named for an Adrian Belew song, was a public access computer system in New York City in the late 1980s, known on Usenet as node dasys1. Based on a Stride Computer brand minicomputer running the UniStride Unix variant, the Big Electric Cat (sometimes known as BEC) provided dialup modem users with text terminal-based access to Usenet at no charge. This was the first such system in New York and one of the first in the world. Previously, access to Usenet had been almost exclusively through systems at universities, or a few government and very few commercial installations. While Bulletin Board System culture and Fidonet existed at the time, systems which allowed the general public to access Usenet were virtually unknown. As with many early Internet and Usenet systems, a community began to form among users of the system which had occasional outings to restaurants.

History BEC was started by four college students, with one of them, Rob Sweeney, owning the equipment. The other sysops were Charles Foreman, Lee Fischman, and Richard Newman. A list of BBSes in the 212 Area Code contains the following note, attributed to Lee Fischman

I was one of the sysops. Originally we were set up (illicitly) in the computer room of a midtown advertising agency. It is a VERY amusing story -- pity you didn't know about it before the movie! We eventually migrated to the offices of a communications firm elsewhere in the city. I still have the Big Electric Cat user manual, with its very entertaining cover. Robert Sweeney was killed in a motorcycle accident in 2001. The movie referred to is BBS: The Documentary. BEC was not intended to be a profit-making operation, charging fees that were designed only to cover operating costs, (Phrack reports $5 per month for an account at the end of 1989, though the system may have in fact been out of operation by then, and other sources note that the system was supported by donations) and relying entirely on volunteer labor. In mid-1990, after increasingly unreliable operation, The Big Electric Cat suffered what proved to be fatal hardware failure, leaving a gap which was filled by some its users founding one of the first commercial ISPs ever, Panix. 2600 Magazine founder Eric Corley used a Big Electric Cat account.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Big Electric Cat

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Big Electric Cat claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Big Electric Cat before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Big Electric Cat ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Big Electric Cat

In research: The Big Electric Cat appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Big Electric Cat in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Big Electric Cat is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics History of the Internet, Panix (ISP), Shell account providers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Big Electric Cat outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Big Electric Cat in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Big Electric Cat means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Big Electric Cat out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Big Electric Cat in simple terms?

Why does The Big Electric Cat matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Big Electric Cat?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Big Electric Cat.