Amateur packet radio operation

In the early 1980´s a group of amateurs in Tucson, Arizona, clubbed together to make a packet radio system and this resulted in a kit of parts and eventually the production by a number of companies world wide of `a terminal node controller´. This embodies an amateur variation on the standard X25 protocol of telephony to ensure that the received information was entirely error free. This seems to have captured the imagination of amateurs, and earlier attempts of using packet system based on the BBC computer and other adaptations fell by the wayside. The admirable story of how amateurs have pooled and disseminated their knowledge to gain worldwide usage in a few years is still unfolding, and already the same apparatus is creeping into industrial and commercial usage