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]
History is Bunk. - Brave New Work
1945
Science - The Endless Frontier A report to the President by Vannevar Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, July 1945.
"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. US Air Force sponsored . Licklider. [Waldrop 78]
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]
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]
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.
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. He started at ARPA in 1962. The original name of the IPTO was the Command and Control Research Department. The name change which occurred in 1965 reflected Licklider's influence and vision. It reflect a paradigm shift away from the computer as a number crunching device to a networked computer engaged in communications.
August:
L.C.R. Licklider & Welden Clark, "On-Line Man Computer Communication"
Robert Fano explains scientific computing 1963
Don't say that he's hypocritical
Say rather that he's apolitical
"Once the rockets are up,
who cares where they come down
That's not my department,"
says Wernher von Braun
- Tom Lehrer (1965)
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]
October: Larry Roberts and Thomas Merrill demonstrate the first wide area computer network, packets over telephone network. [ISOC] [Roberts, Net Chronology] [Roberts: History s3]
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]
Taylor receives approval from ARPA Director Charles Herzfeld and $1 m funding. [Waldrop 80]
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 to move from MIT to DARPA to be the Chief Scientist of the ARPANet. [Roberts, Net Chronology]
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] [Waldrop 83]
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]
Larry Robert's plan for ARPANet, Multiple Computer Networks and Intercomputer Communication[Roberts, Net Chronology] (Abstract: "There are many reasons for establishing a network which allows many computers to communicate with each other to interchange and execute programs or data. The definition of a network within this paper will always be that of a network between computers, not including the network of typewriter consoles surrounding each computer. Attempts at computer networks have been made in the past; however, the usual motivation has been either load sharing or interpersonal message handling. Three other more important reasons for computer networks exist, at least with respect to scientific computer applications. Definitions of these reasons for a computer network follow.") Referred to network as "ARPANet" for the first time. [Segaller 62] Larry Robert's plans relies upon the earlier work of Leonard Kleinrock. The transmission likes would be 2400 bps and ASCII was specified. [Salus p 19]
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." (first reference to "packet") (Abstract: "Those computer applications which involve rapid response to events at distant points create special problems in digital communication. Such applications are increasing in number, and could increase more rapidly if better solutions existed to the communication problems. The present-day methods for communication of data in rapid-response systems employ 'private wires' for the transmission paths or, where the available data rate and reliability is sufficient, employ voice channels from the switched telephone network. Given these rather arbitrary transmission facilities the user adds the terminal equipment necessary to make a communication system and sometimes integrates a number of paths into a private network."
At this meeting, Larry Roberts meets Scantlebury, Davies, and Baran. [Roberts, Net Chronology] [ISOC]
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]
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]
In January 1969 ARPA awarded a contract to BBN to build the first interface message processor (IMP) (to become routers in a stupid sub-network). [Roberts, Net Chronology] The other finalist bid for the ARPA contract was from Raytheon. [Nerds2.0 p. 79][Vanity Fair] "BBN designed the IMP to accommodate no more than 64 computers and only one network." [Kleinrock] The BBN team was headed by Robert Kahn. [Kahn] See [Babbage 22 (installation of first IMP)] The IMPs were to be delivered to UCLA, SRI, UCSB, and the Uni of Utah. The IMPs would be built using Honeywell 516s. [RFC 1000]
"These sites were running
a Sigma 7 with the SEX operating system, an SDS 940 with the Genie
operating system, an IBM 360/75 with OS/MVT (or perhaps OS/MFT), and
a DEC PDP-10 with the Tenex operating system. Options existed for
additional nodes if the first experiments were successful." [RFC 1000]
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][Vanity Fair]
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, "But I had no idea why anybody would want such a thing." [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 concessions 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]
Crocker volunteered to managed the RFCs initially. In the early 70s, Jon Postel become the editor of the RFCs. RFCs were maintained by Stanford SRI in its capacity as NIC. The RFCs came to be a function of the Network Working Group. [Roberts, Net Chronology][Crocker NYT ("The early R.F.C.'s ranged from grand visions to mundane details, although the latter quickly became the most common. Less important than the content of those first documents was that they were available free of charge and anyone could write one. Instead of authority-based decision-making, we relied on a process we called "rough consensus and running code." Everyone was welcome to propose ideas, and if enough people liked it and used it, the design became a standard.")] [Living Internet RFC History] [IETF RFC 2555, 30 Years of RFCs (7 April 1999)]
"A month later, after a particularly delightful meeting in Utah, it
became clear to us that we had better start writing down our discussions. We had accumulated a few notes on the design of DEL and
other matters, and we decided to put them together in a set of notes.
I remember having great fear that we would offend whomever the
official protocol designers were, and I spent a sleepless night
composing humble words for our notes. The basic ground rules were
that anyone could say anything and that nothing was official. And to
emphasize the point, I labeled the notes "Request for Comments." I
never dreamed these notes would distributed through the very medium
we were discussing in these notes. Talk about Sorcerer's Apprentice!"
[RFC 1000]
The software for the ARPA Network exists partly in the IMPs and
partly in the respective HOSTs. BB&N has specified the software of
the IMPs and it is the responsibility of the HOST groups to agree on
HOST software.
During the summer of 1968, representatives from the initial four
sites met several times to discuss the HOST software and initial
experiments on the network. There emerged from these meetings a
working group of three, Steve Carr from Utah, Jeff Rulifson from SRI,
and Steve Crocker of UCLA, who met during the fall and winter. The
most recent meeting was in the last week of March in Utah. Also
present was Bill Duvall of SRI who has recently started working with
Jeff Rulifson.
Somewhat independently, Gerard DeLoche of UCLA has been working on
the HOST-IMP interface.
I present here some of the tentative agreements reached and some of
the open questions encountered. Very little of what is here is firm
and reactions are expected. . . . . .
BBN Report No 1822, Interface Message Processor: Specifications for the 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. Larry Roberts becomes head of IPTO. Pressure from Vietnam and Congress is redirecting ARPA's mission towards DoD's military needs. [Almanac]
Telecommunications: "Since nobody was going to give the agency a few billion dollars to string its own wires across the country, ARPA would have to move the data through AT&T's telephone system . Unfortunately, that system's basic dial up process was far too cumbersome and slow for computer-speed communications. So instead, Roberts decided ARPA would make a series of long-distance calls, and just never hang up. More precisely, the agency would go to AT&T and lease a series of high-capacity phone lines linking one ARPA site to the next, so that the computers would always be connected." [Waldrop 80]
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]
ARPANet Design Objectives
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.
[See NIST 1992 p 4 ("Sharing of computing resources among researchers was the primary objective. . . Despite heavy milutary involvement, the resulting ARPANET turned out to be a fairly open network. It provided a test bed for the development of communication protocols to support functionality such as transmission of graphical data, remote login, file transfer, and electronic mail.")]
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] [See also Taylor quoted in Vanity Fair]
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]
The Design Philosophy of the DARPA Internet Protocols, D.D.Clark, Proc SIGCOMM 88, ACM CCR Vol 18, Number 4, August 1988, pages 106-114 (reprinted in ACM CCR Vol 25, Number 1, January 1995, pages 102-111).
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, US Air Force. 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].
"It was necessary to have a strategic system that could withstand a first attack and then be able to return the favor in kind. The problem was that we didn't have a survivable communications system, and so Soviet missiles aimed at U.S. missiles would take out the entire telephone-communication system. At that time the Strategic Air Command had just two forms of communication. One was the U.S. telephone system, or an overlay of that, and the other was high-frequency or shortwave radio. So that left us with the interesting situation of saying, Well, why do the communications fail when the bombs were aimed, not at the cities, but just at the strategic forces? And the answer was that the collateral damage was sufficient to knock out a telephone system that was highly centralized. Well, then, let's not make it centralized. Let's spread it out so that we can have other paths to get around the damage." [Baran quoted in Vanity Fair][Paul Baran MP3 at Vanity Fair]
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.
The first node of the ARPANet, an Interface Massage Processor (IMP) (built by BBN), delivered on August 30, and was installed in October 1969 in UCLA. It was a Honeywell DDP-516. The Operating System took 6K of memory. x [Picture of Leonard Kleinrock with IMP1 at UCLA][Roberts, Net Chronology] [Salus p 35] [RFC 1000 (UCLA was counting on a delay by BBN which was having timing troubles. BBN fixed the problem and air shipped the IMP)] "They were each the size of a
refrigerator and cost about $100,000 in 1969 dollars." [RFC 2555]
The Second IMP was delivered to SRI in the beginning of October. [RFC 1000]
The IMPs were connected by 50 kbps leased lines. [Salus p 35] [Nerds p 82] [NIST 1992 p 4]
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.
Notes of Licklider:
"29 Oct 1969
22:30
talked to SRI
Host to Host"
Oct. 29, 10:30 pm:
"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)
Apollo 11 Goes to the Moon with Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon July 20 [Apollo] Of the two original ARPA projects, one made headlines, the public knew nothing about - both radically changed the world.
Nov. 21 Larry Roberts visits UCLA. Telenet connection to SRI is demonstrated. [RFC 1000]