I was recently asked to put together a piece about my recent appointment as both the E-Mail Miller Number Custodian (MNC) and Internet Boardman Number Custodian (BNC). Since I still haven't put together an article, I decided to do the next best thing: clone! One of advantages of being the only person left with a copy of the EP archives on one's computer is the ability to pull old articles out of a hat!

The first article, discussing Boardman Numbers (BN's), is taken from Issue 176 of Eric Klien's Electronic Protocol, Chapter 6, July 1990. Eric took it from another zine, which I think is now defunct. From the article itself, it appears it was originally written 25 years ago, in 1972! A couple of notes on the this article:

1. Graustark is still going, according to the Winter 1994 Diplomacy World. Subscriptions are available from John Boardman, 234 East 19th, Brooklyn NY, USA, 11226. $10 for issues.
2. The present BNC is Vince Lutterbie, 1021 Stonehaven, Marshall MO, USA, 65340. Vince publishes details of all this games, in the 'zine Everything, which is now passed on from one BNC to the next. He dishes out Boardman Numbers for all postal games in North America, and he also hands out blocks of BN's to foreign BNC's so that the BNC's in North America, Europe, and Australia all use unique numbers.
3. Recently, as an experiment, Vince allowed me to start giving out BN's to Internet games. He gave me blocks of BNs, from KA-LZ, PA-QZ and TA-UZ: 156 numbers. Initially, I hoped this would last us all of 1994, but near the end of Feb, we had already gotten up to 1994LF -- 1/5 of our numbers, with only 1/6 of the year gone. At this rate I would have to get 52 numbers from Vince to finish the year! I was also to be assigning numbers for 1988-1993 games using data in the Hall of Fame. The 1988, 1989, and half of the 1990 games that were part of EP were given BN's at the time, directly from the BNC.

The second article is a little more recent, and discusses Miller Numbers. It is taken (most recently) from Issue 72 of Electronic Protocol (no chapter numbers back then), in June 1989. Of course, Eric took it from somone else too, so it's probably a little older. Incidentally, the present MNC, is Lee Kendter, Jr. I believe that Lee Kendter, Sr (the author of the second article), was a former MNC, and may have been the MNC when this article was first written. A couple of notes on the second article:

1. From what I understand, Miller Numbers are named after the late Don Miller, and also date back to the 1960's. A lot more information about Miller Numbers and Don Miller can be found in Mark Nelson's excellent interview with Fred Davis Jr., which is available by FTP at ftp://ftp.ugcs.caltech.edu/pub/diplomacy/Documents.
2. The current MNC, Lee Kendter Jr, appointed me E-mail MNC late last year, and gave us a block of numbers, from AAA to AZZ. Last year, so far, I had given out all numbers up to AGW. I will also be going back to 1990-1992 games. Part of the deal with Lee is that I will be publishing the game details, (including postal publishing -- you know, ink, paper and sealing wax), however at this point, I haven't gotten around to it. Hopefully soon I will have a crack at throwing something together. Unlike the BNC, I also can give out MN's to non-Internet games (like AOL, Compu$erve, Genie, etc.), however, to date, no-one has contacted me, and my attempts at contact have not gotten too far.

Nick Fitzpatrick (nfitz@sentex.ca)

If you wish to e-mail feedback on this article to the author, click on the letter above. If that does not work, feel free to use the "Dear DP..." mail interface.