router

[Dave Wilton]

> Another angle and a possible precursor concerns army use in the
> signals corps. A correspondent on my Aus language email list offers
> the following:
>
> As an Army signaller my experience of the word pre-dates
> modern computers.
> In the days of torn tape relay messaging, there were alpha
> numeric codes
> which were called routing (pron rowting) indicators. That was
> when it was
> done handraulically.

Back in my US Army days (late 80s) we had routing slips (also pron rowting),
yellow pieces of paper that were stapled to the covers of documents that
indicated which offices/persons should see the document and in which order.
Of course we could have just used a photocopier, but I guess some traditions
die hard. Saved a lot of trees though.