Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette
Speaker 1: and I'm an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as he always does during the
Speaker 1: recording of podcasts, as senior writer Jonathan Strickland, Hey there,
Speaker 1: and uh, do you remember that TV show? It was
Speaker 1: on many years ago? My two dads. I thought you
Speaker 1: were gonna say Punky Brewster, not that one. Yes, I
Speaker 1: do remember my two dads when they asked us if
Speaker 1: we wanted to do a Father's Day episode. We were
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how we could do something that
Speaker 1: related to tech stuff, and so Jonathan and I decided
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk about the fathers of the Internet.
Speaker 1: And as it turns out, there were two to some
Speaker 1: massive exponential power. We're going to be talking about a
Speaker 1: whole lot of fathers of the Internet because well, there
Speaker 1: were no two or one, or or seven people that
Speaker 1: were responsible for the Internet as we know it today.
Speaker 1: There are tons and tons of people who worked on
Speaker 1: different aspects of the Internet, right, Yes, this is uh,
Speaker 1: the Internet is a thing that grew out of the
Speaker 1: contributions of dozens and dozens of people. But really, in
Speaker 1: order to kind of narrow our our scope a bit,
Speaker 1: we thought we would really concentrate on our Pannet, which
Speaker 1: in itself is sometimes considered a father of the Internet
Speaker 1: because it's a predecessor of the Internet. It itself was
Speaker 1: not the Internet. It was a It was, however, a
Speaker 1: network of computers, of of heterogeneous computers, so in other words,
Speaker 1: they were not all the same type of computer, which
Speaker 1: was a big deal because, uh, prior to the Arpanet,
Speaker 1: there really there was really no way of of networking
Speaker 1: together various different models of computers because they all had
Speaker 1: their own proprietary languages that they worked on, and one
Speaker 1: computer's systems was not necessarily compatible with any other computer
Speaker 1: system to the Internet. From arponnet, I am your father.
Speaker 1: End of line. Um, yeah, that's true, it's not possible.
Speaker 1: Well anyway, that and whole that end. Uh, the quote
Speaker 1: I know is not exactly accurate, but because someone will
Speaker 1: write in um, yeah, that that was the big thing,
Speaker 1: And there is a myth, if you will, that the
Speaker 1: Arpanet was designed by the United States government to create
Speaker 1: a defense network or a network to share information between
Speaker 1: different parts of the defense network real life meat space
Speaker 1: network UM sharing for nation in the event of a
Speaker 1: catastrophic attack of some sort two ferry information from one
Speaker 1: group to another. And that's not exactly true, although hey,
Speaker 1: it is a nice reason. UM the government. Different parts
Speaker 1: of the government were at that time looking for ways
Speaker 1: to share information between computers, and so were UM different
Speaker 1: parts of UH university networks. And those were really that
Speaker 1: the two UH types of organizations that were really interested
Speaker 1: in networking computers back in those days. But they all
Speaker 1: had UM. If you are a regular tech stuff listener,
Speaker 1: you know that all these different kinds of machines back
Speaker 1: then were really very proprietary. You didn't have UM. You know,
Speaker 1: you didn't have a system UH where you made computers,
Speaker 1: and they would all run the same operating system like
Speaker 1: you do now with Windows or for example, or Linux. UM.
Speaker 1: Even IBM systems. I'm sure you know the system three
Speaker 1: sixty would run in a different operating system than a
Speaker 1: different kind of IBM computer because it was designed to
Speaker 1: run on on that specific machine. And of course you
Speaker 1: had dozens and dozens of different computer manufacturers on making
Speaker 1: these machines. So you know, you had the problem of
Speaker 1: trying to communicate between UH one and another, so you
Speaker 1: needed a protocol that would bridge the gap. Yea. So
Speaker 1: let's take some steps back before we get into the
Speaker 1: development of that actual protocol, because I think the journey
Speaker 1: there is pretty interesting. Oh yeah, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: say that if you were going to network these machines,
Speaker 1: which was the goal, that would that would be one
Speaker 1: of the things you have to do. So in fact,
Speaker 1: the one of the first people to sort of envision
Speaker 1: something that that kind of encapsulates what the Internet is,
Speaker 1: but in a in a smaller way. Is h Venever Bush?
Speaker 1: I s. Yes. He was a very important fellow in
Speaker 1: the United States history. He worked on the Manhattan probably ject, yes,
Speaker 1: which we've talked about before. That was the project where
Speaker 1: for a few beads we were able to build an
Speaker 1: entire city. Wait, no, I'm thinking of something else. Yes,
Speaker 1: yes you are that was that was actually Manhattan. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: Bush was very involved with the Defense Department in during
Speaker 1: during World War Two. UM a very very smart guy
Speaker 1: and uh he helped with a Manhattan project as well
Speaker 1: as as other projects. UM and one of the things
Speaker 1: he really wanted to do, and you can read about
Speaker 1: this in an article in the Atlantic. It's still up
Speaker 1: on the website called as We May Think. Yep, he um.
Speaker 1: He came up with well, he was a founder of Raytheon,
Speaker 1: and he came up with this idea he called microwaves,
Speaker 1: he called memes and memeics. In his mind, it was
Speaker 1: going to be a micro film based machine, because that
Speaker 1: was sort of the epitome of the technology at the time,
Speaker 1: and the idea being that he would have a database
Speaker 1: of all the information that he would ever need, an
Speaker 1: entire library of information, and also that he could create
Speaker 1: information on this system, and that he would be able
Speaker 1: to access this information in a very natural way because
Speaker 1: the system itself would mimic the way people think. So
Speaker 1: this was kind of a or not maybe not even
Speaker 1: mimic compliment, perhaps will say, complement the way humans think.
Speaker 1: So that way, when you search for something, it would
Speaker 1: be able to bring back the relevant information to you
Speaker 1: and not just any information that just happened to have
Speaker 1: that term in it. We you know, we talked about
Speaker 1: this in our our episodes about semantic web and artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: Is this whole idea of contextual information that a machine
Speaker 1: might be able to recognize. Now, this was something that
Speaker 1: he was just sort of theorizing about, but it was
Speaker 1: a very important element of what would go into our
Speaker 1: bonnet and the Internet. Now, the next person I would
Speaker 1: talk about besides Bush is Joseph Carl Robnett Lick Lighter
Speaker 1: or j c. R or Lick to his friends. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's funny because I've read a paper that Lick wrote. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh that why. I don't want to get too
Speaker 1: far ahead of where Jonathan's going with this, but um
Speaker 1: he if you think, well that this this machine, this
Speaker 1: memics um would be able to call up any basically
Speaker 1: you would you would take a document and take a
Speaker 1: photo of it and create a microfilm from that and
Speaker 1: store it. Because you know, computers back then we're huge.
Speaker 1: They weren't um reliable like they are now. They were giant. Um,
Speaker 1: so that was kind of impractical, and so are a
Speaker 1: large cabinets full of paper. So that was kind of
Speaker 1: the idea was, Hey, I'll shrink this down into his
Speaker 1: size where I could just keep it in a desk
Speaker 1: and find stuff. Um. Well, and you say, wow, that
Speaker 1: that's remarkably like the Internet. Well, in a way, yes
Speaker 1: it is, but it's also not that remarkable because Lick
Speaker 1: has said or um, of course I read this a
Speaker 1: long time ago, but I remember him saying in this,
Speaker 1: uh this article that it's not an accident that the
Speaker 1: Internet sort of mimics the memics. It's the idea was
Speaker 1: so compelling to the early founders of the Internet, and
Speaker 1: they said, we like this, Let's try to make this
Speaker 1: happen with the technology. We have to change it from
Speaker 1: theory to reality. Yeah. Yeah, So it's it's not completely
Speaker 1: an accident that what the memics. Um, the concept of
Speaker 1: the memetics is very much like a computer attached to
Speaker 1: the Internet and being able to pull up information. And
Speaker 1: so lit he was working in back in nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: He was working at Bolt Baroneck Newman Newman, which is
Speaker 1: also better known as BBN. That's going to come up
Speaker 1: again in a little bit, yes it will. He worked
Speaker 1: for bb IN and then came up with an idea
Speaker 1: called he was calling the Intergalactic Computer Network because why
Speaker 1: think small, And this was the idea of being able
Speaker 1: to network computers together so that you are able to
Speaker 1: share information between machines in a very efficient way because
Speaker 1: you know, the the challenge was that you had all
Speaker 1: these really smart people working on at the time, very
Speaker 1: sophisticated machinery, but all of their work was siloed. All
Speaker 1: of that work was contained within the physical building that
Speaker 1: that machine was in. Yeah, if you want to share that,
Speaker 1: that means you have to box that up and send
Speaker 1: it or or you had to go and use it.
Speaker 1: You had to you had to yourself plan a trip
Speaker 1: out to wherever that machine was and share information that way.
Speaker 1: There was no way of sending it electronically at all,
Speaker 1: and so you could call somebody and read it to them,
Speaker 1: but that's still that's electronic still. But the Intergalactic Computer
Speaker 1: Network was this idea that you would be able to
Speaker 1: actually have computers communicate with one an they're in share information. Well,
Speaker 1: he became the head of Computer Research Program at the
Speaker 1: Advanced Research Projects Agency which is ARPA, and he became
Speaker 1: the head of that in nineteen sixty three and he
Speaker 1: began he renamed the Computer Research Program the Information Processing
Speaker 1: Techniques Office or i p t o IP two and
Speaker 1: um UH. The Advanced Research Projects Agency is now known
Speaker 1: as DARPA. We added a d on that UM and
Speaker 1: it's part of the Department of Defense, which is where
Speaker 1: that whole concept of they wanted to create a network
Speaker 1: that could withstand a catastrophic failure UM sort of came from.
Speaker 1: And it came from because there were there were movements
Speaker 1: within the United States government to try and create something
Speaker 1: like that, but that was not the purpose of ARPA
Speaker 1: net Um, which would grow out of link Lighters projects
Speaker 1: now link later to Liqui liquid It or rather taught
Speaker 1: to several other people and kind of talked about his
Speaker 1: his concept of this interglad to computer network and got
Speaker 1: them really excited and they sort of jumped on board
Speaker 1: and also helped champion the cause and get UH funding
Speaker 1: money and partnerships with various research institutions to agree to
Speaker 1: try and make this become a reality. A couple of
Speaker 1: those people include Ivan Sutherland, who was another is another
Speaker 1: really remarkable guy in computer science history because not only
Speaker 1: was he part of trying to get this network off
Speaker 1: the ground, he also invented sketch Pad, which was an
Speaker 1: early graphical user interface sort of the predecessor to things
Speaker 1: like Windows and the Mac operating system and really any
Speaker 1: operating system on any touch device kind of has. You know,
Speaker 1: you have to go all the way back to Sutherland
Speaker 1: to thank him for his work. He also was a
Speaker 1: pioneer in computer graphics. He was a pioneer in augment
Speaker 1: a reality, in virtual reality, so he was It's interesting
Speaker 1: because his his focuses were on its folk. I we're
Speaker 1: on a different area of computer science than network technology,
Speaker 1: but he was still very much interested in this. He
Speaker 1: became the director of I p t O in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four after lick Lighter left the program, so lick
Speaker 1: Lighter leaves before Arpanette begins. Another person that lick Lighter
Speaker 1: taught to and got interested in this idea was Bob Taylor,
Speaker 1: and Bob Taylor became the director of I P t
Speaker 1: O from nineteen sixty five to nineteen sixty nine, and
Speaker 1: he was the one who actually sent out the request
Speaker 1: for quotation the r f Q for building out our
Speaker 1: Pinett And this was the project where they wanted to
Speaker 1: connect multiple computers together through a network and create the
Speaker 1: infrastructure that would make that possible. Now, this infrastructure would
Speaker 1: have to be able to work of various different kinds
Speaker 1: of computers and send information between them so that the
Speaker 1: different computers could understand what they were. Each one was
Speaker 1: saying because, like we had said before, these computers were
Speaker 1: working on proprietary operating systems that were not compatible. So
Speaker 1: they send out this request for quotation to one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty bidders. Now, most of the companies and research
Speaker 1: institutions that received these h r f q s thought
Speaker 1: that the whole idea was just too difficult, outlandish, impossible,
Speaker 1: just not practical at all. There were quite a few
Speaker 1: of them probably said why, Yeah, so they want to
Speaker 1: do exactly there were some that did say why. They
Speaker 1: received responses from twelve of the one and forty bids
Speaker 1: they sent out requests for bids uh and out of
Speaker 1: the twelve, four of them were considered viable by our PA,
Speaker 1: And it ultimately went down to a couple of different candidates,
Speaker 1: and the one that stepped down in the end was
Speaker 1: bb N, which was awarded the bid on April seventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine. Yeah, they're they're a very interesting company
Speaker 1: to don't want to get into too much depth, but
Speaker 1: they're sort of I think there's sort of raytheon like
Speaker 1: in that they have done all kinds of different engineering
Speaker 1: projects over the years, and I always associated them with
Speaker 1: computing in the Internet, but they their history goes back
Speaker 1: quite a ways. UM, and they did they they have
Speaker 1: done much much more than just participate in this pro project.
Speaker 1: But they were certainly well suited because they were were
Speaker 1: UM electrical engineering experts. Certainly and UH Taylor left I
Speaker 1: p t O because of the Vietnam War actually, and
Speaker 1: Lawrence Larry G. Roberts stepped in and he was program
Speaker 1: manager and office director at Areva before he became the
Speaker 1: director of I p t O. And UH he was
Speaker 1: someone who had who was leading a team within this, UH,
Speaker 1: this department within I p t O that was working
Speaker 1: on packet switching. Now, packet switching is something that was
Speaker 1: being worked on by various individuals throughout the entire world independently.
Speaker 1: So this was not necessarily When when I say that
Speaker 1: Larry Roberts and his team worked on packet switching, this
Speaker 1: is not where packet switching necessarily just comes from. There
Speaker 1: was a a pioneer in packet switching called Paul Baron
Speaker 1: who was very much working on this, as well as
Speaker 1: another person in the UK named Donald Davies Yes. UM
Speaker 1: also Leonard Kleinrock Yes who ended up working with our
Speaker 1: pannette through u c l A because u c l
Speaker 1: A was the University of California at Los Angeles was
Speaker 1: one of the research facilities one of the universities that
Speaker 1: became part of the initial Arpanet project, and so klein
Speaker 1: Rock began to work through our pa net, not directly
Speaker 1: from ARPA itself, but through u c l A. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the three those three guys are are known really for
Speaker 1: creating the packet switching part of the Internet, the concept
Speaker 1: behind packet switching on the Internet, the way it's done.
Speaker 1: Um and uh actually have a quick overview of packet
Speaker 1: switching again. UM, well, I was going to get to
Speaker 1: that in just a second. Um. Actually is a very uh,
Speaker 1: very diverse team. Baron actually came from from Poland. Um
Speaker 1: and Uh it's actually now in Belarus, but at the
Speaker 1: time it was in Poland. And Um, he he had
Speaker 1: an idea of a network. Now there there's several different
Speaker 1: kinds of networks. Um. Obviously, you can have one computer
Speaker 1: in the center to which other machines connect, which is
Speaker 1: known as a centralized network. And then you can have
Speaker 1: a decentralized network. Um. If you think about I think
Speaker 1: Napster kind of used that concept. We have multiple servers,
Speaker 1: but the machines connect to those main computers, which are
Speaker 1: in turn connected to a main main computer. UM. Or
Speaker 1: you know, there are many important computers and lesser computers
Speaker 1: connect to those, but those that's a decentralized network. UM.
Speaker 1: But uh, but Paul decided that what he should do
Speaker 1: is create a or what what you should use for
Speaker 1: this particular project is a distributed model. UM. And that's
Speaker 1: the way the the internet works. Uh. It's it's a
Speaker 1: network of networks and each computer has redundancies. UM. So
Speaker 1: what does that mean? So if we were using a
Speaker 1: decentralized network, um, and you sent an email to the
Speaker 1: net to the main computer that your computer was hooked
Speaker 1: up to, but that computer was down, your email wouldn't
Speaker 1: get where it's going. Um. In a distributed network, there
Speaker 1: are multiple routes that that email can go. So the
Speaker 1: computer that you were supposed to send it to is down,
Speaker 1: but there's another way to go. So it goes through
Speaker 1: that computer and then from there to another computer and
Speaker 1: it basically follows that path. Now. UM, what they realized,
Speaker 1: these guys were that this redundancy is good, but they
Speaker 1: they're actually using redundancy of redundancies on the Internet, the
Speaker 1: network of networks and said, okay, well, uh, it would
Speaker 1: be kind of cumbersome to send this all as one file.
Speaker 1: And if we send it all is one file and
Speaker 1: it gets bogged down in the direction it was supposed
Speaker 1: to go, it's not going to get there. So they
Speaker 1: broke it into pieces called which they decided to call packets.
Speaker 1: And um, each packet is represented more than once. So
Speaker 1: let's say, just for the sake of convenience, that you
Speaker 1: send an email and that's broken down into ten packets. Um.
Speaker 1: Those ten packets are sent to multiple locations or through
Speaker 1: multiple locations to get to the end point. And one
Speaker 1: way or another, those ten packets are supposed to reach
Speaker 1: there and be reassembled on the other end in the
Speaker 1: correct order to complete the transmission. So the packets, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, if if one of those computers is down,
Speaker 1: let's say, and packets three and seven are lost, they
Speaker 1: have also been sent to other computers in the path,
Speaker 1: and they will be reassembled in the correct order. Um.
Speaker 1: And using using that method, Uh, packet switching has become
Speaker 1: the way we send information over the Internet, and that
Speaker 1: goes for tiny little files to great big chunks. So
Speaker 1: Larry Roberts had decided that this packet switching technology, which
Speaker 1: had was in its infancy at this point, was probably
Speaker 1: the best way to go when you're talking about having
Speaker 1: a networked series of computers and you want to get
Speaker 1: this information from one to another. UM and so that's
Speaker 1: kind of the direction that the team went in. And
Speaker 1: also the folks at the various institutions where the computers
Speaker 1: that were going to be connected together, uh, they also
Speaker 1: were working on this along with the folks over at
Speaker 1: our path. So let's, uh, let's let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about where these computers were. There. There were
Speaker 1: four initial host computers for our pannett. All right, these
Speaker 1: four hosts were the four computers that were going to
Speaker 1: be connected together. One was at u C l A
Speaker 1: and it was the University of California at Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: It was an s D S Sigma seven computer running
Speaker 1: the Sigma Experimental operating System. Uh. Then you had the
Speaker 1: University of California's color Fried Interactive Mathematics Center, which had
Speaker 1: an IBM three sixty slash seventy five running on the
Speaker 1: O S slash m VT operating system. You had the
Speaker 1: University of Utah, which had the d e C p
Speaker 1: DP ten computer with the with the ten X operating system,
Speaker 1: the old Deck machines. And then you had Stanford Research
Speaker 1: Institute and they had an SDS nine D computer which
Speaker 1: ran on the Genie operating system. So all four of
Speaker 1: these machines are different machines running different o s s.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, did you mention that two of those machines
Speaker 1: were made by the same company yet they use completely
Speaker 1: different operating systems? No? I did not, and so then yes,
Speaker 1: but that is true. There are two two of them
Speaker 1: were made, Um, we're sts computers, but both of them
Speaker 1: were running different operating systems. So yeah, even the same
Speaker 1: company's machines wouldn't necessarily talk to each other in the
Speaker 1: same way. That's true. And so those were the those
Speaker 1: are the four institutes as well. So you've got u
Speaker 1: c l A, Stanford, University of California, and um, you've
Speaker 1: got the University of Utah. Uh. Now, the team over
Speaker 1: at our PA that was in charge of putting this together. Um,
Speaker 1: actually what happened was not really the team at Arbo,
Speaker 1: the team at BBN, because that was the company that
Speaker 1: won out the bid. The team at BBN consisted of
Speaker 1: Frank Hart who was the leader of the team, Dave Walden,
Speaker 1: who was a programmer and real time systems expert. You
Speaker 1: had Will Crowther who was another programmer. You had Bernie Cosell,
Speaker 1: who was a d bugger, so he was someone who
Speaker 1: would find all the stuff that's wrong with the programs
Speaker 1: that everyone else is making. You had, Yeah, you had
Speaker 1: Bob Cohn, was a computer theory expert and an error
Speaker 1: control specialist and also was the guy they went to
Speaker 1: when it came to how do we send data across
Speaker 1: telephone lines? That was kind of his master network protocols.
Speaker 1: You had several Orne Stein who was a hardware specialist UM,
Speaker 1: and you had another hardware engineer by the name of
Speaker 1: Ben Barker who joined the team a little bit after
Speaker 1: the initial UH team got together, and Uh, I think
Speaker 1: that's everybody. I think I got everyone who was on
Speaker 1: the that initial team. Now, the approach they made was
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. You know, how do you create this
Speaker 1: network where these four computers that do not speak a
Speaker 1: common language, how can you get them to communicate with
Speaker 1: each other? And they came up with a hardware and
Speaker 1: software solution. So really it's a hardware and protocol solution.
Speaker 1: The hardware approach they took was to create interface message
Speaker 1: processors imps. YEP. A guy named Mike wing Wingfield actually
Speaker 1: came up with the the interface that would connect a
Speaker 1: computer to the IMP. Yeah. So these are these themselves
Speaker 1: are computers. These are but these were unlike now the
Speaker 1: computers that we're talking about at these these colleges were
Speaker 1: those enormous computers that you think of in the old
Speaker 1: you know, pictures from the sixties room full of computer. Now,
Speaker 1: the were comparatively speaking, much more simple than those. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually have a photo um from u c l
Speaker 1: A that shows uh Klein rock and a picture of
Speaker 1: an IMP, which I'm gonna show Jonathan. Um. It's it
Speaker 1: kind of looks like a stereo amplifier actually built into
Speaker 1: a wall. It's it's not it's not very exciting to
Speaker 1: look at, but very necessary. At these lights are blinking
Speaker 1: out of sequence. Will give them the blink in sequence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's definitely a Star Trek computer. Yeah, or stuff
Speaker 1: blink stuff what blinks? And Yeah. So the the imps
Speaker 1: were designed to be the go between. They're actually kind
Speaker 1: of like routers. There were gateways is what they were. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you connected these physically to the host machines with
Speaker 1: a serial connector, a proprietary Cereal connector, and these then
Speaker 1: the imps themselves would then connect to phone lines that
Speaker 1: had been LEAs for the project. Uh. And they could
Speaker 1: run at about fifty bits per second. That's the data
Speaker 1: transfer speed that they were capable of reaching. And the
Speaker 1: original imps were Honeywell d DP five sixteen computers. And
Speaker 1: actually I read an interesting where I thought I thought
Speaker 1: it was a kind of a funny story Ben Barker
Speaker 1: when he joined the team, he was one of the
Speaker 1: hardware engineers. Uh they you know, he was. They received
Speaker 1: the delivery of the Honeywell five sixteen computer to hook
Speaker 1: up to a host computer, and he wanted to test it.
Speaker 1: He wanted to run some code on and it didn't work.
Speaker 1: And then he realized nothing was working, and so he
Speaker 1: physically took the computer apart and physically unwrapped the wires
Speaker 1: that were wrapped around pins and then reattached them to
Speaker 1: different pins because he figured out that it had been
Speaker 1: wired wrong, so he had to rewire the machine from
Speaker 1: the ground up in order to get to work. Worked
Speaker 1: sixteen hours a day until he got it to work properly.
Speaker 1: That wasn't one of the computers, that was just one
Speaker 1: of the imps. So these MPs, it's surprising that he
Speaker 1: didn't just pitch the thing out the window. Of course,
Speaker 1: I imagine that that would be kind of heavy. So
Speaker 1: these MPs provide the interface, UH from a physical standpoint,
Speaker 1: so that you know, you would send a command to
Speaker 1: the imps. The MP would then send that command along
Speaker 1: to the MP connected to the host computer you wanted
Speaker 1: to send messages to, and then that would UH MP
Speaker 1: would send its message to that host computer that would
Speaker 1: receive whatever the command was UM. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: more to it than that, but that was the basic
Speaker 1: idea and UH. The protocol that first was used on
Speaker 1: Urbanet was called Network Control Program in CP. That was
Speaker 1: actually used for quite a while. It was it was
Speaker 1: not It was not the most elegant protocol. It took
Speaker 1: a while, and it wasn't the most uh flexible protocol
Speaker 1: I there, but it was serviceable. It worked well enough
Speaker 1: so that it could create these connections between these different computers.
Speaker 1: This was the set of rules that the computers had
Speaker 1: to follow in order for the communications to happen. And uh,
Speaker 1: eventually they started to add more stuff on top of
Speaker 1: the basic commands that were built into our ponett at
Speaker 1: the beginning. All Right, So those those other things included
Speaker 1: things like email and file transfer that that was built
Speaker 1: on top of n c P. But n c P
Speaker 1: was kind of it was not the strongest foundation for that.
Speaker 1: So we'll we'll talk a little bit about what took
Speaker 1: over n c P a little bit later. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: so that was your basic design, and uh, did you
Speaker 1: do you have the story about the first message that
Speaker 1: was sent on Arpanett? So so well, first I'll say
Speaker 1: Arpanett gets connected, uh in nineteen nine. Um, it's kind
Speaker 1: of funny it actually it actually moved pretty quickly. Um.
Speaker 1: The the contract was awarded in April, right, but the
Speaker 1: the first connection was made later that year. Uh. And
Speaker 1: in fact, all four of the hosts were connected by
Speaker 1: December five, nineteen So April the contracts awarded by December five,
Speaker 1: they've actually managed to create, uh, the the connections that
Speaker 1: that put these four hosts in communication with each other. Now,
Speaker 1: the first permanent link what went up on November twenty
Speaker 1: one nine, and that link was between the imp at
Speaker 1: u c l A and the MP at Stanford Research Institute.
Speaker 1: The other two would join online before the end of
Speaker 1: the year. And the first message was sent by a student,
Speaker 1: Charlie Klein, who was a student at U c l A.
Speaker 1: And the first message was supposed to be asking was
Speaker 1: it asking for an extension for a term paper? No? No,
Speaker 1: actually it was. It was being supervised by Klein Rock
Speaker 1: at the time, so I'm pretty sure that that when
Speaker 1: the he could have just turned around and asked, dude,
Speaker 1: my boss is reading over my shoulder. L O L here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the first message was supposed to be log in alright,
Speaker 1: so he typed the L and you typed the O,
Speaker 1: and then the system crashed. So the very first message
Speaker 1: sent across arpanet was low. It should have been Hello world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was just a little short of that, which is
Speaker 1: you know, of course, the traditional greeting when your first
Speaker 1: starting up a new program. Yeah, so anyway, that was
Speaker 1: the first message was low sent across uh that. Now,
Speaker 1: after about an hour of fiddling with the system, they
Speaker 1: got it back online image to actually do a remote
Speaker 1: log in. So it was a successful test, which is
Speaker 1: sometimes shorter than the amount of time it takes me
Speaker 1: to log in once my systems crashed, that's true. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and so Arpanet was once once again. Towards the end
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty nine, the Arpanett was was working. Now,
Speaker 1: that was a great achievement, but that was just the beginning. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's when we started seeing the various people working at
Speaker 1: these research institutes as well as within our PA and
Speaker 1: at BBN build on things like email file transfer protocol
Speaker 1: uh and that sort of stuff, where um it became
Speaker 1: a way to expand the features of arpanet. Uh. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two, it was Ray Tomlinson who developed the
Speaker 1: electronic mail system for Arbonett. Yes, he's he's the one
Speaker 1: responsible for finding new life for the AT sign on
Speaker 1: your keyboard. Yeah. He he chose that as the symbol
Speaker 1: to join the names of the recipient and the host
Speaker 1: computer so that the the system would know what computer
Speaker 1: to send it to and then what user on that
Speaker 1: computer would get the message. And that's why our email
Speaker 1: addresses today have that AT symbol on there. It's a
Speaker 1: carry over from that, yes, yes, which I actually kind
Speaker 1: of like that he chose that particular symbol because since
Speaker 1: it has the A in the center. It kind of helps,
Speaker 1: you know, newcomers recognize, you know, it gives us a
Speaker 1: mnemonic device to go at at. Of course, people have
Speaker 1: been trying to come up with the actual name for
Speaker 1: that thing for many years. Um, and it's been hotly
Speaker 1: debated in some circles. Anyway, some circles. There was also
Speaker 1: there was a student at U c l A who
Speaker 1: worked in Klein Rocks department. Who have I heard of
Speaker 1: this guy? Yes, you probably have. He met Bob Cohn
Speaker 1: at U c l A. While Cohn was working on
Speaker 1: the Arpanet deployment. This is a fellow named venton Surf.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, vent Surf. Yeah, you may know him from
Speaker 1: such things as Google. Um, well, hopefully you know him
Speaker 1: from such things as the Internet. Right. So he started
Speaker 1: over at U c l A. And then he moved
Speaker 1: to Stanford and UH and then in nineteen he actually
Speaker 1: went to work for Darba itself, but he and Cohn
Speaker 1: began to work together to start designing something that would replace. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: it would replace the n c P protocols because, like
Speaker 1: I said, they the n c P protocol worked well
Speaker 1: enough for initially connecting these computers together, but it lacked
Speaker 1: a lot of the the the flexibility that they needed
Speaker 1: once they started coming up with new things to add
Speaker 1: on top of just just communication protocols. So he and
Speaker 1: Bob con began to work on what we now call
Speaker 1: t c P I P and uh the Transmission Control
Speaker 1: Protocol on the Internet protocol. Uh. This was much more
Speaker 1: sophisticated compared to n c P, and it took time
Speaker 1: to design it, uh, and once it was designed, it
Speaker 1: took some time to transition to it. In fact, it
Speaker 1: wasn't until January one that n CP was officially retired
Speaker 1: and our bonnet changed over to use t c P
Speaker 1: i P instead. And that I think some people say
Speaker 1: that day, which they also call Flag Day, that that
Speaker 1: day marks the birth of the Internet, because that was
Speaker 1: when we started using the protocols that the Internet relies
Speaker 1: on in order to get you know, it's the set
Speaker 1: of rules that we all follow, or that all the
Speaker 1: machines follow in order to get information from one place
Speaker 1: to another. And that's funny because uh, it really it's
Speaker 1: sort of the birth of the Internet proper is It's
Speaker 1: sort of hard to uh define in in that way
Speaker 1: because uh, you know that the drafts for TCP were
Speaker 1: predated that by ten years um nearly seventies seventy three. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and Bob con was working on a way of
Speaker 1: getting satellite data networks to connect to land based networks.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of like the The actual growth of
Speaker 1: the Internet was sort of a natural evolution of various
Speaker 1: communication networks connecting together. I mean that is the Internet.
Speaker 1: It is a network of networks and Arpanet became part
Speaker 1: of that in a way. So Arpanett itself was not
Speaker 1: the Internet. Arponnet was a predecessor to the Internet, and
Speaker 1: in some ways was connected to other elements of the Internet. UM.
Speaker 1: But a lot of the stuff that was developed within
Speaker 1: our bonnet would become the backbone of what, at least
Speaker 1: from a protocol standpoint, of what we think of as
Speaker 1: the Internet. UM. Yeah. If you're interested, there is a
Speaker 1: a really uh cool article called How the Internet Came
Speaker 1: to Be that Surf wrote and he gets into the
Speaker 1: history of the arpanet and the Internet. UM. But it's
Speaker 1: really kind of kind of cool because it's written from
Speaker 1: an insider's point of view. UM. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I found kind of interesting was that one when
Speaker 1: they were working on it, UM, they graduate students. Surf included, UH,
Speaker 1: this was such a high level project that you know,
Speaker 1: a quote unquote lowly graduate student wouldn't be allowed to
Speaker 1: speak with authority. So UM, they had requests for comment
Speaker 1: basically saying, so what do you guys think? UM, So,
Speaker 1: without treading on toes UM, people like UH vent Surf
Speaker 1: and the other people who we consider instrumental and you
Speaker 1: know Internet experts were able to uh to speak their
Speaker 1: mind and I think, um, you know, now we go Wow,
Speaker 1: they had to ask him to please comment on this.
Speaker 1: I mean he's he's like, you know, one of the people.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's just kind of funny how that works.
Speaker 1: And UH also mentioned that as their work progressed, the
Speaker 1: military became more interested in using the network in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen seventies. Again yeah, because again you're talking about
Speaker 1: the ability to to communicate between centers very very quickly
Speaker 1: share information that could be pivotal to national security. So
Speaker 1: it was obviously something that the military would be interested
Speaker 1: in and in taking advantage of these systems that were
Speaker 1: created for our pannette and either creating a separate military network,
Speaker 1: which was done UM, or adding on to existing networks,
Speaker 1: which was also done. And in fact you could there
Speaker 1: were windows from the Internet into the military networks. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: this was this was sort of what gave rise to
Speaker 1: what we think of today as the Internet. Now. Our
Speaker 1: pinett itself did not last forever. It was decommissioned on
Speaker 1: February nine and was Vince Surf had something to say
Speaker 1: about that. He wrote a poem. Okay, here's here's the poem.
Speaker 1: Vince Surf wrote to honor the Arponnet when it was
Speaker 1: taken offline in nineteen. He said, it was the first,
Speaker 1: and being first was best. But now we lay it
Speaker 1: down to ever rest. Now pause with me a moment,
Speaker 1: shed some tears for all langsyne for love, for years
Speaker 1: and years of faithful service, duty done. I weep, laid
Speaker 1: down thy packet now, O friend and sleep. Um yeah.
Speaker 1: The funny thing was that the Arpanet was the the
Speaker 1: forerunner of the Internet. And um, but what we learned
Speaker 1: from that, the all the people who were what we
Speaker 1: now consider the fathers of the Internet, basically what they
Speaker 1: learned from the Arpanet was, um, the best technologies to
Speaker 1: use in networking, many many computers over long and short distances. Um,
Speaker 1: and you know, the the the arpon nets spawned many
Speaker 1: different kinds of networks, one of which I used extensively
Speaker 1: in college bittenet UM. But you know there were used
Speaker 1: net and and and many others. UM. And these technologies,
Speaker 1: you know, are are really the result of the arpon
Speaker 1: nets UH influence as you know this this primitive and
Speaker 1: later you know, more sophisticated computer network. UM. So we
Speaker 1: definitely derive what is now the Internet and the ability
Speaker 1: to uh to switch packets and communicate with reliable protocols.
Speaker 1: Um to to the efforts of these many, many, many
Speaker 1: many people UH and and UH many of those many
Speaker 1: many people have been awarded countless awards by governments around
Speaker 1: the world. They've received received um honorary degrees by universities
Speaker 1: and other uh you know, other kinds of accolades from
Speaker 1: all kinds of people for the work they've done in
Speaker 1: bringing the world together in communication. So I think that
Speaker 1: it's only fitting that they also receive from us Happy
Speaker 1: Father's Day, fathers of the Internet. We got you a
Speaker 1: goodie bag and a tie you'll you all have to share.
Speaker 1: It's a networked tie. It's got you all have to
Speaker 1: wear it at the same time together. It's all got
Speaker 1: it's just got zeros and ones all over. It's a
Speaker 1: binary tie. It's either it's either tied or not tied.
Speaker 1: That's kind of binary. So anyway, Yeah, that's that's our
Speaker 1: discussion about Urbanett, the father of the Internet. If you will,
Speaker 1: and we hope you've enjoyed it. If you guys have
Speaker 1: any suggestions for our topics you would like us to
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