Peter Scott (1947-2013), developer of HyTelnet

December 31, 2013 4:38 AM

Peter Scott (February 14, 1947 - December 30, 2013) worked in the Systems Department of the University of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon, Canada) Libraries from 1976 to 2005. One of the early library weblog writers, Peter is most well known for HyTelnet, an interface for Telnet services he developed from 1990. In his 1991 video, Peter demonstrates a later version of HyTelnet, while an archive lists the resources available through the service.

In addition to providing commercial and library-oriented Internet services, often with Darlene Fichter, since the early 1990s, Peter also developed and maintained several online catalogues, including Publishers' Catalogues, Libdex (later sold), the Weblogs Compendium, and the RSS Compendium.

Peter was a musician, having started playing in England in 1963 during the British Blues Boom. In 1992 he won a Juno Award for his song TV Preacher on the album Saturday Night Blues which won "Best Roots and Traditional Music Album".

Peter was also a Fulham football club supporter.

posted by Wordshore (20 comments total)

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posted by Mezentian at 5:03 AM on December 31, 2013

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posted by yeoz at 5:29 AM on December 31, 2013

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posted by Mister Bijou at 5:52 AM on December 31, 2013

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posted by jquinby at 6:16 AM on December 31, 2013

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posted by kjh at 6:16 AM on December 31, 2013

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posted by djeo at 6:34 AM on December 31, 2013

Ah, I used HyTelnet many times.

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for an old-school hacker.
posted by nonspecialist at 6:57 AM on December 31, 2013

There's been a lot of very cool things happening in the library technology world coming out of Canada, surely in great part because of early hackers like Peter. Thanks for posting this.
posted by Space Coyote at 7:32 AM on December 31, 2013 [2 favorites]

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posted by Renoroc at 7:58 AM on December 31, 2013

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posted by localroger at 8:06 AM on December 31, 2013

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posted by wotsac at 8:23 AM on December 31, 2013

Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
^]

telnet> q
Connection closed.


I know, wrong telnet. But what are you gonna do.
posted by RustyBrooks at 8:27 AM on December 31, 2013 [2 favorites]

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posted by adamsc at 4:05 PM on December 31, 2013

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posted by luckynerd at 9:03 PM on December 31, 2013

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posted by benzenedream at 9:39 PM on December 31, 2013

Hey I've used his software! Pretty cool, usable CLI; haven't thought about it in at least a decade.

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posted by oceanjesse at 10:30 PM on December 31, 2013

Wow, I was FB friends with him (we're both librarians in Saskatchewan) but I never knew about his impact.

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posted by Jaybo at 8:44 PM on January 1, 2014

Wild. And the Fulham thing (COYW!) is a nice tidbit.
posted by grubi at 8:42 AM on January 2, 2014

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posted by mamamusings at 7:52 PM on January 6, 2014

Peter's obituary in the Star Phoenix.
posted by Wordshore at 3:21 AM on January 7, 2014