The Creators

by Katie Hafner | Wired Magazine | Issue 2.12 | Dec 1994

"Twenty-five years ago, they brought the Internet to life."

"In September, 19 middle-aged men gamely crammed themselves onto a bridge at the Christian Science Publishing Society's Mapparium in Boston to pose for a photograph. They were gathered to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the installation of the first node on the Arpanet, the precursor to the Internet. True to an engineer's proclivity to solve problems, even at the risk of seeming meddlesome, they couldn't help but offer some advice to the photographer, who was having a little trouble fitting them all in the shot: Try a different angle. Try a different configuration. Try a different lens. Try a different camera! The years haven't dimmed any of the invention and curiosity that drove these men to rig together the world's first real data network."

"Bob Taylor, a psychoacoustician, was director of the computer research program at the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1966 when he hit upon the idea of lining computers together. By getting various research sites to share computing resources, Taylor figured he could save some money. Thus, albeit unwittingly, he ignited a revolution. Charlie Herzfeld, Taylor's boss at the time, was head of ARPA and keeper of the purse strings. He liked Taylor's idea and gave him US$1 million to build a small experimental network."

"Larry Roberts, a pioneer in computer networking at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, was considered the only scientist in the country who could put the network together. It took Taylor more than a year to convince Roberts to move to ARPA, but Roberts finally agreed. He designed the original four-node network, which was to be based on packet-switching, as opposed to circuit-switching."

"Wes Clark, a gifted computer scientist, came up with the idea for building a separate computer to handle the communications, called an Interface Message Processor. At the same time, computer scientists in the UK, including Roger Scantlebury, were also working on a data network. The Brits coined the word "packet." In 1968, Roberts and fellow ARPA administrator Barry Wessler sent out a request for proposals. Dozens of companies responded. IBM, however, claiming such a network could never be built, declined to bid."

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Wired 2.12 : The Creators