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| It is one if the greater ironies of computer history that the vision of the hippies had to be married to the technology funded and fostered by the Pentagon, before the world of integrated information and communication became possible. [Stephen Segaller, NERDS2.0 p 134] |
1945
Science - The Endless Frontier A report to the President by Vannevar Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, July 1945.
1950
National Science Foundation established. [NSF]
"One leading science spokesman was Vannevar Bush, a respected engineer and science administrator who headed the government's wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development. . . . Bush maneuvered to have President Roosevelt request from him a report on how the nation should support science in the postwar period. Bush's 1945 response, Science--The Endless Frontier , became famous as the prescription for government support of science. . . . President Truman signed the bill creating the National Science Foundation on May 10, 1950. The act provided for a National Science Board of twenty-four part-time members and a Director as chief executive officer, all appointed by the president. Among other things, the law directed the agency to encourage and develop a national policy for the promotion of basic research and education in the mathematical, physical, medical, biological, engineering, and other sciences; to initiate and support basic scientific research in the sciences; and to evaluate the scientific research programs undertaken by agencies of the federal government. Organizationally, the Foundation could create whatever divisions were necessary to carry out its activities, but the act specified that four divisions had to be included: medical research; mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences; biological sciences; and scientific personnel and education. The latter division was responsible for scholarships and graduate fellowships."
1951
MIT establishes Lincoln Labs to conduct research and development on missile defense. They hire JCR Licklider
.
1954
Robert Oppenheimer is stripped of his security clearance during the McCarthy era. [NSF]
1957 Sputnik
October 4, 1957: Russian launch Sputnik, the first man made satellite, demonstrating the technological ability to launch an intercontinental mission. The launch of Sputnik I and Sputnik II shocked the US Government and led to a swift response by Pres. Eisenhower (the former WWII general who fully appreciated the importance of science and technology for national defense). [NASA - Sputnik and the Dawn of the Space Age] [PBS NOVA - Sputnik Declassified] [NSF History: From Sputnik to the Golden Age]
James R Killian
1958
The Soviet probe Luna 2 lands on the moon [Salus p 5]
In response to Sputnik, the United States in 1958 established the Advanced Research Projects Agency in the US Department of Defense to develop US missiles. It was soon decided, however, that missile research should be conducted by a civilian agency and in 1958 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created, taking with it all of the missile research. This left ARPA to focus on information technology and computer network research and development. [NASA History in Brief, NASA] [DARPA Over the Years, DARPA] [ARPA - DARPA The History of the Name Change]
ARPA's director Charlie Herzfeld.
1960
In the 1960s, there were three groups working on packet switched networks:
- Larry Roberts at ARPA
- Paul Baran at RAND consulting for DoD
- Donald Davies at the National Physical Laboratory in the U
In 1960 Licklider published "Man Computer Symbiosis." While at BBN, convinces BBN to purchase first PDP-1 computer from Digital Electronics Corporation.
Defense Communications Agency established [DISA]
1961
Jack Ruina Director of ARPA 1961-63. [Hauben] Ruina would recruit Licklider.
June: Computer Science is added to ARPA's mission [Hauben]
Leonard Kleinrock published Information Flow in Large Communication Nets
Yuri Gargarin is first human to orbit earth in the Soviet Vostok I. USA launches Alan Shepard into suborbital flight three weeks later. [Salus p 5] .
1962
The Information Processing Technologies Offices within ARPA - funded big iron main frames at university research departments. But these mainframes were disconnected islands that could not be shared between campuses. Networking the computers meant sharing resources and saving DoD money.
The first director of ARPA IPTO was JCR Licklider
August: L.C.R. Licklider & Welden Clark, "On-Line Man Computer Communication"
1963
Licklider proposed an idea that came to be known as the Intergalatic Computer Network. [ISOC]
JCR Licklider, Members and Affiliates of the Intergalatic Computer Network, Memo (1963)
IPTO budget $5-8m [Spacewar]
1964
L. Kleinrock, Communication Nets: Stochastic Message Flow and Delay, Mcgraw-Hill (New York), 1964.
September: Licklider was succeeded by Ivan Sutherland as head of ARPA IPTO (Licklider would return in 1974). Sutherland brought Robert Taylor over to ARPA. [Roberts, Net Chronology]
November: Larry Roberts and Licklider meet [Business Week 04] [Roberts, Net Chronology]
1965
October: Larry Roberts and Thomas Merrill demonstrate the first wide area computer network. [ISOC] [Roberts, Net Chronology]
1966
Robert Taylor
succeeded Sutherland as director director of IPTO in 1966. Taylor started at NASA in 1961. Robert Taylor's office in the Pentagon was Room 3D-200. [Roberts, Net Chronology]
L. Roberts & T. Merrill, "Toward a Cooperative Network of Time-Shared Computers", Fall AFIPS Conf., Oct. 1966. [Roberts, Net Chronology]
In 1966 Robert Taylor persuaded ("blackmailed") Larry Roberts
IPTO funding 17 computer sites. [Salus p 19]
1967
April: IPTO Principal Investigator Meeting, ARPANet Design Session in Ann Arbor, MI. Wesley Clark recommends use of the Interface Message Processor (subnetwork of micro computers) [Clark] [Roberts, Net Chronology (" It was at this meeting that Wes Clark suggested the use of mini-computers for network packet switches instead of using the main frame computers themselves for switching.")] The design objective was to have the mainframes only interact with the IMPs, and have the IMPs do all the network work. The result was a subnetwork dedicated to networking functions without any processing at the application or content layers. [Salus p 19]
The suggestion of networking mainframes for the purposes of sharing computer resources was not received with enthusiasm. Schools were hesitant to share their prized DARPA funded mainframe computers with other schools. However, since these computer resources were ARPA funded, ARPA could use this funding source in order to leverage and persuade the recalcitrant universities to participate in the ARPANet and play nice with the other participating schools, sharing their resources. [Babbage 23, 24]
October: ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles
- Larry Robert's plan for ARPANet, Multiple Computer Networks and Intercomputer Communication
- Roger Scantlebury deliver paper (written with Donald W Davies, at the National Physical Laboratory, England) "A digital communication network for computers giving rapid response at remote terminals.
At this meeting, Larry Roberts meets Scantlebury, Davies, and Baran. [Roberts, Net Chronology] [ISOC]
1968
April: Kleinrock receives an ARPA research contract. The ARPA funding went to support PdD students such as Cerf, Crocker and Postel. This was 100% of Kleinrock's funding at UCLA [Babbage 6, 14, 15] [Roberts, Net Chronology]
June, 3 ARPAnet Plan "Resource Sharing Computer Networks" submitted for approval. [Salus p 26]
June 21 ARPANet plan is approved by Robert Taylor. [Salus p 26]
ARPA RFQ for IMPs is released Aug. [ISOC] [Roberts, Net Chronology]
September: Twelve proposals were received. [Hauben] [Roberts, Net Chronology]
JCR Licklider and Robert Taylor, The Computer as a Communications Device, Science and Technology 1968
December: Elmer Shapiro, A Study of Computer Network Design Parameters, SRI ("Ideally, the communication subsystem should represent a 'transparent pipe' between hosts, in that a message from host A for host B would arrive at B as an identical copy of the source message.") [Salus p 25] [Def Tech Info Center]
1969
In January 1969 ARPA awarded a contract to BBN
Sen. Ed Kennedy sent BBN a telegram informing BBN that they had won the contract and said that they were "to be congratulated on winning the contract for the interfaith message processor." So reports have him congratulating BBN on its ecumenical efforts. [Nerds2.0 p 80] [No Credit] [How the Web was Born p 27] [Roots of the Internet]
Severo Ornstein of BBN quote
I talked to Frank about it one night and he said, "Well, here's this RFQ, from ARPA. They want to build a network and so why don't you take it home and look at it?" And I did and I thought about it a little bit overnight and it seemed as though this was fairly straightforward thing to do. It was fairly well described in the RFQ. And so it seemed we could build it. And I went in and told Frank in words that I guess have become somewhat immortalized that sure, we could build it, "Bit I had no idea why anybody would want such a think." [Nerds2.0 p 76]
IBM and AT&T did not bid on the contract [Segaller 62] (note that AT&T may have been prohibited to have built the IMPs pursuant to the MFJ) IBM apparently considered the project "impossible" and too expensive. Two decades later IBM had learned from its mistake and was making great consessions in order to be a part of NSFNET. [Segaller 72]
Leonard Kleinrock recalled
The computer guys would say, "Communication guys, will you please give us good data communications." The communications guys would turn around and say, "What are you talking about, the United States is a copper mine. You've got wires all over the place; use them." The computer guys would say, "No, you don't understand. It takes half a minute to set up a call, and your charge is for a minimum of three minutes. All I want to do is send a hundred milliseconds of data." These guys would turn around back to the computing guys and say, "Go away little boy, there's no revenue there." So the little boys went away, and they created packet switching. [Babbage 27] [See also Gaudin]
S. Crocker, RFC001 Host software
BBN Report No 1822, Interface Message Processor: Specifications fo rthe Interconnection of a Host and an IMP (May).
Larry Roberts succeeded Taylor in 1969. [Roberts, Net Chronology] Sept 1969 Robert Taylor leaves IPTO and will end up at Xerox PARC
ARPA Lore
Alan Kay on ARPA: "90 percent of all good things that I can think of that have been done in computer science have been funded by that agency. Chances that they would have been funded elsewhere are very low. The basic ARPA idea is that you find good people and you give them a lot of money and then you step back. If they dont do good things in three years they get dropped - where 'good' is very much related to new or interesting." [Spacewar]
ARPA Project Multiple Access Computer story by Alan Kay: "They had a thing on the PDP-1 called 'The Unknown Glitch'. They used to program the thing either in direct machine code, direct octal, or in DDT. In the early days it was a paper-tape machine. It was painful to assemble stuff, so they never listed out the programs. The programs and stuff just lived in there, just raw seething octal code. And one of the guys wrote a program called 'The Unknown Glitch,' which at random intervals would wake up, print out I AM THE UNKNOWN GLITCH. CATH ME IF YOU CAN, and then it would relocate itself somewhere else in core memory, set a clock interrupt, and go back to sleep. There was no way to find it." [Spacewar]
1967: ARPA initiates planning of the ARPANet. Design objectives of ARPANet included
- interconnecting different research computers,
- sharing data between networks,
- loadsharing of processing power (where one mainframe was busy, processing could be shifted to a different mainframe with available capacity) and
- communications between different research centers (minor objective that became a major benefit and use). See email.
ARPAnet Plan 1967
"At the meeting it was agreed that work could begin on the conventions to be used for exchanging messages between any pair of computers in the proposed network, and also on consideration of the kinds of communications lines and data sets to be used. In particular, it was decided that the inter-host communication 'protocol' would include conventions for character and block transmission, error checking and retransmission, and computer and user identification. Frank Westervelt, then of the University of Michigan, was picked to write a position paper on these areas of communication, an ad hoc 'Communication Group' was selected from among the institutions represented, and a meeting of the group scheduled." (ARPA draft, III-26)
Instead of paying for duplicated resources spread isolated at different universities, ARPA's objective was to network those computers in order to share resources and to share money.
About 1966, Mr. [Robert] Taylor recalls, his office in the Pentagon had a terminal connected to time-sharing community at MIT, a terminal connected to a different kind of computer at the University of California at Berkeley, and a third terminal to the Systems Development Corp. in Santa Monica. "To talk to MIT I had to sit at the MIT terminal. To bring in someone from Berkeley, I had to change chairs to another terminal," he says. "I wished I could connect someone at MIT directly with someone at Berkeley. Out of that came the idea: Why not have one terminal that connects with all of them? "That's why we built ARPAnet," he says. [Almanac]
Kleinrock: "The interesting thing is, as I recall, that part of the motivation for this network is the fact that in 1967, in the mid 1960s DARPA was heavily supporting a lot of people doing work on time-sharing. And every time an investigator got a new contract, the first thing he wanted was a computer - the best and biggest. Pretty soon Larry said, "This is getting ridiculous," because each facility they created evolved into a specialized kind of facility, like the graphics capability at Utah, the database capability at SRI, and the simulation capability at UCLA. So Larry came up with the concept of a resource sharing network, where there would be specialized sites, and if you wanted that special capability, you connect to that site to get it, or you would pull back data or programs and use them locally. That was one of his motivating reasons, namely, to reduce the number of time-sharing systems he had to support." [Babbage 7]
"This network is envisioned as an interconnected communication facilities to utilize capabilities available at other ARPA sites. The network will provide a link between user(s) programs at one site, and programs and data at remote sites." [BBN Proposal]
1968: " The stated objectives of the program were to develop experience in interconnection computers and to improve and increase computer research productivity through resource sharing. Technical needs in scientific and military environments were cited as justification for the program objectives. Relevant prior work was described. It was noted that the computer research centers supported or partially supported by IPT provided a unique testbed for computer networking experiments, as well as providing immediate benefits to the centers and valuable research results to the military. The network planning that had gone on was described, the need for a network information center was noted, and the network design was sketched. A five year schedule for network procurement, construction, operation, and transfer out of ARPA was presented. (It was noteworthy that IPT had initially had in mind eventual transfer of the operational network to a common carrier.) Finally a several-million-dollar, several-year budget was stated." (ARPA draft, III-35)
"The Internet developed out of research efforts funded by the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the 1960s and 1970s to create and test interconnected computer networks. The fundamental aim of computer scientists working on this "ARPANET" was to develop an overall Internet architecture that could connect and make use of existing computer networks that might, themselves, be different both architecturally and technologically. The secondary aims of the ARPANET project were, in order of priority: (1) Internet communication must continue despite the loss of networks or gateways between them; (2) the Internet architecture must support multiple types of communications services; (3) the architecture must accommodate a variety of networks; (4) it must permit distributed, decentralized management of its resources; (5) the architecture must be cost-effective; (6) the architecture must permit attachment by computer devices with a low level of effort; and (7) the resources used in the Internet architecture must be accountable. [FTC Report 2007 p 13-14]
See also Salus p 19, David D. Clark, The Design Philosophy of the DARPA Internet Protocols, COMPUTER COMM. REV., Aug. 1988
The initial network planned was first 4 nodes and then 12 nodes
Packet Switching
By the late 1960s, computer scientists were experimenting with non-linear "packet-switched" techniques to enable computers to communicate with each other.29 Using this method, computers disassemble information into variable-size pieces of data called "packets" and forward them through a connecting medium to a recipient computer that then reassembles them into their original form. Each packet is a stand-alone entity, like an individual piece of postal mail, and contains source, destination, and reassembly information. Unlike traditional circuit-switched telephone networks, packet-switched networks do not require a dedicated line of communication to be allocated exclusively for the duration of each communication. Instead, individual data packets comprising a larger piece of information, such as an e-mail message, may be dispersed and sent across multiple paths before reaching their destination and then being reassembled.30 This process is analogous to the way that the individual, numbered pages of a book might be separated from each other, addressed to the same location, forwarded through different post offices, and yet all still reach the same specified destination, where they could be reassembled into their original form.31 [FTC Report 2007 p 14]
End to End
Also, during the Internet's early years, network architectures generally were based on what has been called the "end-to-end argument."40 This argument states that computer application functions typically cannot, and should not, be built into the routers and links that make up a network's middle or "core." Instead, according to this argument, these functions generally should be placed at the "edges" of the network at a sending or receiving computer.41 This argument also recognizes, however, that there might be certain functions that can be placed only in the core of a network. Sometimes, this argument is described as placing "intelligence" at or near the edges of the network, while leaving the core's routers and links mainly "dumb" to minimize the potential for transmission and interoperability problems that might arise from placing additional complexity into the middle of the network.42 [FTC Report 2007 p 17]
Paul Baran at RAND - Distributed Network Designed
At this time, Paul Baran at RAND had been researching survivable networks in the event of a nuclear exchange, and had been consulting with DoD. Baran's analysis indicated that centralized networks had single points of failure that made them vulnerable to attack. The solution, Baran argued, was a distributed network design were traffic could be rerouted among multiple potential redundant routes and the loss of any no single point in the network would not result in a critical failure.
"Both the US and USSR were building hair-trigger nuclear ballistic missile systems. If the strategic weapons command and control systems could be more survivable, then the country's retaliatory capability could better allow it to withstand an attack and still function; a more stable position. But this was not a wholly feasible concept, because long-distance communication networks at that time were extremely vulnerable and not able to survive attack. That was the issue. Here a most dangerous situation was created by the lack of a survivable communication system." (Baran in Abbate, 10).
Influence of Baran on ARPANet Design:
There is some ambiguity over how much influence Baran had over the ARPANet, and whether "the Internet was designed to withstand nuclear attack." Some accounts give Baran a great deal of influence; other accounts characterize the ARPANet as a network over which to share R&D, and had nothing to do with nuclear survivability.
Many people believe that Baran's concepts were fundamental to the ARPANet's design. [Salus p 6, 10, 24] The Internet Pioneers website relates the story as follows:
when Larry Roberts was beginning work on the ARPANET he heard of Baran's ideas. Roberts was not designing a network for use in wartime, but rather to facilitate communications between ARPA researchers and allow them to use remote computing resources effectively, but Baran's ideas for a robust network were appealing to Roberts. Baran's distributed network and packet-switching schemes were adopted, and Baran became an informal consultant for the ARPANET project. [IP Baran]
The NSFNet Final Report stated "An outgrowth of the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency, the ARPANET's packet-switching scheme was meant to provide reliable communications in the face of nuclear attack," clearing indicating that ARPANet followed Baran's design. [NSFNet Final Report p. 6]
Others believe that Baran's work was separate from ARPA's work. Baran was working with the Air Force; the ARPANet was being developed by ARPA. The different research had different motivations:
It was from the RAND study that the false rumor started claiming that the ARPANET was somehow related to building a network resistant to nuclear war. This was never true of the ARPANET, only the unrelated RAND study on secure voice considered nuclear war. However, the later work on Internetting did emphasize robustness and survivability, including the capability to withstand losses of large portions of the underlying networks. [ISOC n 5]
Larry Roberts stated
"Recently, people have been [] Paul Baran wrote about a secure nuclear defense network, his concept of what the network was, and applying it to the ARPANet. Of course, they had nothing to do with each other. I went to Congress and defended it. And what I told Congress was that this was for the future of science in the world - the civilian world as well as the military - and the military would benefit just as much as the rest of the world. It was worthwhile being done under government and military sponsorship, but it clearly wasnt for military purposes. And I didnt mention nuclear war." "Time said the ARPANet was built to enable Defense Department scientists to connect to one another in the event of a nuclear war. I wrote a letter to Time pointing out they were mistaken, and they wrote a letter back to me assuring me that their sources were correct." [Segaller 70]
" Paul Baran, "On Distributed Communications Networks", IEEE Transactions on Systems. It is from this paper that the rumor was started that the Internet was created by the military to withstand nuclear war. This is totally false. Even though this Rand work was based on this premise, the ARPANET and the Internet stemmed from the MIT work of Licklider, Kleinrock and Roberts, and had no relation to Baran's work." [Roberts, Internet Chronology]
Some versions of the story indicate that that the RAND researchers and the ARPA leadership met once and that the two lines of research were independent and did not influence each other. [Denning 2]
Baran and the Air Force:
In 1965, Baran and RAND formally recommended to the US Air Force that they build a distributed network. In 1966, this recommendation was passed on to the Defense Communications Agency (DCA will take over administrative responsibility for the ARPANET from DARPA in 1975). [Segaller 64] The recommendation received no traction.
- Baran, P. On Distributed Communication RAND (1964)
- Internet Pioneers: Paul Baran
- [Segaller 64]
ARPANet is Born Fall 1969
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The first node of the ARPANet, an Interface Massage Processor (IMP) (built by BBN), was installed in October 1969 in UCLA. It was a Honeywell DDP-516. The Operating System took 6K of memory.. [Picture of Leonard Kleinrock with IMP1 at UCLA] [Roberts, Net Chronology] [Salus p 35]
The IMPs were connected by 50 kbps leased lines. [Salus p 35]
The hosts interconnected with a host-to-host software. "The host-to-host interface was awful to begin with." [Babbage 23] This would would be replaced by NCP which would then be replaced by TCP/IP.
"A month later the second node was added (at Stanford Research Institute) and the first Host-to-Host message ever to be sent on the Internet was launched from UCLA. This occurred in early October when Kleinrock and one of his programmers proceeded to "logon" to the SRI Host from the UCLA Host. The procedure was to type in "log" and the system at SRI was set up to be clever enough to fill out the rest of the command, namely to add "in" thus creating the word "login". A telephone headset was mounted on the programmers at both ends so they could communicate by voice as the message was transmitted. At the UCLA end, they typed in the "l" and asked SRI if they received it; "got the l" came the voice reply. UCLA typed in the "o", asked if they got it, and received "got the o". UCLA then typed in the "g" and the darned system CRASHED! Quite a beginning. On the second attempt, it worked fine!" [Kleinrock, Net History]
By the end of the year, there were four nodes:
- UCLA (Vint Cerf - PdD student, Steve Crocker - PhD student, and Jon Postel with Leonard Kleinrock) Installed Sept 1, 1969
- SRI (Doug Engelbart) (ARPANet's Network Information Center [ISOC]) Installed Oct. 1, 1969 [Roberts, Net Chronology]
- UCSB (Glen Culler), Installed Nov. 1, 1969 and
- Uni Utah Salt Lake (Dave Evans, Ivan Sutherland). installed Dec. 1, 1969
- See also FCC :: Customer Premises Equipment (which affirmed individual's right to attach devices to the end of the telephone network, a necessary precondition to being able to attach IMPs and then modems to the network)
The IMPS were connected with 50 kbps lines. [Nerds p 82]
Apollo 11 Goes to the Moon with Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon July 20 [Apollo]
