Jon Postel -- 31 March 1986 -- TCP/IP
http://www-mice.cs.ucl.ac.uk/multimedia/misc/tcp_ip/8602.mm.www/0167.html
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                         host.txt vs. domain servers

Rick Adams:

I agree that it is nice to have a way to figure out the real address
when all you've got to go on is a nickname or a partial name. But,
one of these days the host.txt file is going to die. So one of the
things that needs to be done is to educate users to realize that when
they tell other people to send them mail the have to give the full
official name of their host. This is one motivation for using the
full official name of the host on everything the host does. It gets
the users used to seeing it, and using it. Local nicknames can be
nice but they do have some disadvantages. So while using hosts.txt
for figuring out what names should have been used when you get stuck
with a nickname is a neat trick, also realize that it won't work
forever.

--jon.