Where Wizards Stay Up Late (33 page)

Three years earlier, the NSF had lifted restrictions against commercial use of the Internet, and now you could get rich not just by inventing a gateway to the Net but by taking business itself onto the Net. When reporters asked them to comment on this, some of the original
ARPANET
builders said they found the new commercialization of the Net lamentable. Others welcomed it.

Few of the pioneers had become wealthy. Metcalfe's invention of Ethernet had made him a multimillionaire. In his nearly thirty years as a computer science professor at UCLA, Kleinrock had guided an army of Ph.D. students, many of whom went on to become luminaries in the field of computer networking. Still teaching at UCLA, Kleinrock ran a successful seminar business on the side. But at the other end of the spectrum was Jon Postel, the unsung hero of networking. He observed the weekend of celebration quietly, much as he had worked for years as keeper of the RFCs and final arbiter in technical matters when consensus couldn't be reached. Postel believed that decisions he had made in the course of his work over the years had been for the good of the community, and that starting a company to profit from those activities would have amounted to a violation of public trust.

Most of the IMP Guys had ended up in BBN's senior management. Walden later served as Heart's boss, and Barker had gone on to run one of BBN's divisions. The most conspicuous exception to this was Crowther, who had remained a programmer. For years Heart had been Crowther's champion, lobbying for the company to let Crowther just be Crowther and think up ingenious ideas in his own dreamy way. In the years following the IMP project, Crowther pursued some unusual ideas about natural language processing, and worked extensively on high-speed packet-switching technology.

Severo Ornstein had left BBN in the 1970s for Xerox PARC, and while there he started Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. When he retired from Xerox, he and his wife moved into one of the remotest corners of the San Francisco Bay Area. For years Ornstein stayed off the Net, and for years he eschewed e-mail.

Of everyone, Vint Cerf was perhaps the most celebrated this weekend. He was the person most of the press turned to for quotes on the Internet's origins. In early 1994 he had left Kahn's Corporation for National Research Initiatives to return to MCI as a senior vice president and help build the company's Internet businesses. His reputation was well known throughout the company. At an MCI operations center in North Carolina someone had hung a sign: “Vint Cerf is the Father of the Internet, but we're the mothers that have to make it work!”

As Saturday's dinner approached, there was a great last-minute rush to make certain that the script for the evening would strike just the right tone. Conrades was to be emcee for the main event. No one should get short shrift at the expense of anyone else. It was a nearly impossible task. At the last minute, seating assignments were shuffled yet again. When the dinner finally commenced, some 250 people packed the Grand Ballroom. Lobbying for a telecommunications bill that was pending, Congressman Markey gave a humorous speech. Cerf presented two awards, and Kahn was singled out for his lifetime of achievement. Louise Licklider, frail and elderly, stood up to receive an extended round of applause on behalf of her late husband.

The celebration held a special poignancy for Heart, now sixty-five, who had recently retired as president of BBN's Systems and Technology Division. He had been at BBN for twenty-eight years. Steve Levy, the BBN chairman, called Heart to the podium, and Heart gave a speech in which he pinpointed the reasons the
ARPANET
project had succeeded. “The project was an example of what can be accomplished quickly, with a really strong sophisticated leadership, adequate resources, and an avoidance of the many kinds of bureaucratic foolishness that can affect so many projects.” Roberts had seen to that. Heart ended on a high note. “Only a small fraction of the technically trained population get a shot at riding a technological rocket, and then get to see that revolution change the world.” The networking revolution, Heart said, would rank among a small number of the most important technological changes of the century. And that night, in that room, it looked like he might be right.

The next morning, one by one, the
ARPANET
pioneers said their goodbyes and checked out of the hotel. Everyone was still riding high, at least a little bit. It hadn't been a bad couple of days.

The description of the formation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency and its Information Processing Techniques Office is derived from personal interviews, two books written by Eisenhower's science advisor James Killian (see bibliography), magazine articles, and from an excellent and thorough history of the agency commissioned by DARPA and written by Richard J. Barber Associates in 1975. The description of Licklider's early years is based on talks given in his honor, on interviews with Louise Licklider and Bill McGill, and on an obituary written by Karl D. Kryter. The description of Licklider's introduction to computers is based on personal interviews with Wes Clark and Jack Ruina, and on Licklider's interview with the Charles Babbage Institute, as well as the Barber Associates report.

The description of Paul Baran's work on distributed communications is based on personal interviews with Baran, as well as various interviews conducted by the Babbage Institute. The description of Donald Davies's early work on packet-switching is based on interviews and correspondence with Donald Davies, and on Martin Campbell-Kelly's articles and interviews. Arthur Norberg and Judy O'Neill's awesome report, “A History of the Information Processing Techniques Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency” also guided us through biographical material and through the early years of IPTO. The report served as the basis for their book
Transforming Computer Technology: Information Processing for the Pentagon,
1962
–
1986
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).

Paul Baran and Professor Manley Irwin supplied the information concerning AT&T's lawsuits against parties thought to be depriving AT&T of revenues.

Doug Engelbart's patent for his mouse came on November 17, 1970. It is patent No. 3,541,541.

The history of Bolt Beranek and Newman was based on personal interviews with Dick Bolt and Leo Beranek. The description of Lincoln Laboratory was based on interviews with Wes Clark, Frank Heart, Larry Roberts, and Len Kleinrock. The description of events surrounding the request for proposals for the Interface Message Processor was based on interviews with Jerome Elkind, Frank Heart, Dave Walden, and Severo Ornstein, as well as various interviews conducted by the Charles Babbage Institute.

The description of the building of the Interface Message Processor was based on interviews with Dave Walden, Ben Barker, Severo Ornstein, Bob Kahn, Frank Heart, Alex McKenzie, and Will Crowther. We also relied on ARPA's request for proposals and on BBN's proposal.

The description of UCLA's preparations for and receipt of the IMP Number One is based on interviews with Len Kleinrock, Steve Crocker, Mike Wingfield, andVint Cerf. The description of the Network Working Group's early work in layered protocols was based on interviews with Steve Crocker, Jon Postel, andVint Cerf. The description of the first log-in session between UCLA and SRI was based on interviews with Len Kleinrock and Charley Kline. The description of the gridlock tests conducted in early 1970 was based on interviews with Bob Kahn, Dave Walden, andVint Cerf.

John Melvin helped us in our unsuccessful search for whoever might have been at the other end of the initial log-in session between UCLA and SRI. Now we know who it was not. We are still eager to know who it was.

The description of the early
ARPANET
sites was based on BBN quarterly technical reports, technical papers, and interviews with John Melvin and John Day. Alex McKenzie supplied information on the early days of the Network Operations Center. The description of the IMP's maintenance problems and subsequent resolution was based on interviews with Ben Barker, Frank Heart, Severo Ornstein, and Alex McKenzie. The description of the ICCC '72 demonstration of the
ARPANET
was based on interviews with Al Vezza, Bob Kahn, Steve Crocker, Len Kleinrock, Jon Postel, Alex McKenzie, and Larry Roberts. “PARRY Encounters the Doctor” was published in its entirety as an RFC and appeared in
Datamation
magazine, July 1973.

The description of Ray Tomlinson's original e-mail hack and his choice of the @ sign as a separator—and as a problem for
UNIX
users—was based on interviews with Tomlinson and JohnVittal.

Parts of the MsgGroup archives were first sent to us by Ed Vielmetti. Einar Stefferud saved them all and deposited them at the Boston Computer Museum. Ken Harrenstien helped us straighten out some early mailing-list history. Ned Freed supplied us with comparative figures on e-mail usage.

The description of the origins of Adventure was based on interviews with Don Woods, Will Crowther, and Dave Walden. Woods's recollections of Adventure also appear in
The Unix Book of Games,
by Janice Winsor, Prentice-Hall Computer Books, 1996. Observations on page 208 about proclamations of officialness on the Net come from “How Anarchy Works,” by Paulina Borsook,
Wired
magazine, October 1995. The history of the finger program came from Les Earnest.

Descriptions of the packet-radio and packet-satellite programs were based on various technical papers (see bibliography), as well as on personal interviews withVint Cerf, Alex McKenzie, and Bob Kahn. Some material was taken from interviews conducted by the Charles Babbage Institute. The description of the evolution of TCP/IP was based on interviews with Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn, John Shoch, Alex McKenzie, and Jon Postel.

The description of the origins of Ethernet was based on interviews with Bob Metcalfe. Butler Lampson's description of Ethernet is taken from
Fumbling the Future,
by Douglas Smith and Robert C. Alexander (William Morrow, 1988), p. 97.

Ole Jacobsen's article, “The Trouble with OSI,”
ConneXions,
volume 6, no. 5, May 1992, particularly the reference to double AA batteries, helped guide the section on OSI vs. TCP/IP. Peter Salus's book
Casting the Net,
(Addison-Wesley, 1995), and his article “Protocol Wars: Is OSI Finally Dead?” in
ConneXions,
volume 9, no. 8, August 1995, also helped frame the debate.

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