![]() ![]() ![]() The TIP was on a raised floor in the middle of the ballroom, with dozens of connected computer terminals circled around it and dozens of ARPA scientists milling about, eager to show off their pride and joy. The ICCC would prove to be for packet switching what theġ876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia was for the telephone: the public unveiling of what would eventually lead to a technological discontinuity.įor the hundreds of computer-communications professionals, government employees, and academic researchers attending the ICCC, the demo permanently changed their perceptions of a computer as a single machine locked in an air-conditioned room. And he had to work with the hotel to prepare the room for the demo and arrange withĪT&T to run leased lines to the Hilton’s ballroom. He also had to convince manufacturers to loan, install, and configure terminals. Computer History Museumįor this to work smoothly, Kahn arranged for various applications (called “scenarios”) to be created and tested. That meeting helped to grow the ARPANET, which by May of 1973 included some three dozen nodes. In an effort to speed the expansion further, network advocates organized a demonstration at the International Conference on Computer Communications in Washington, D.C., in October 1972. From there, attendees could log on to one of the ARPANET hosts and run an application remotely.Īs these hand drawings from the time show, in December 1969 the ARPANET had just four nodes. Kahn’s plan called for a TIP-short for Terminal Interface Processor-to be installed at the Hilton Hotel, the site of the ICCC. Vint Cerf, Robert Metcalfe, and Jon Postel, all of whom were destined for networking fame. Kahn recruited about 50 people to act as facilitators, including the ARPA-funded researchers Once Kahn found a venue for the demo-at the International Conference on Computer Communications (ICCC), to be held in Washington, D.C., in late October of 1972-he worked feverishly to get it organized. One of these researchers, Bob Kahn, suggested that Roberts organize a public demonstration of the ARPANET, both to educate other researchers about the network’s capabilities and to encourage new partners to support the initiative. Lawrence Roberts of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was becoming impatient with the slow pace at which ARPA-funded researchers were getting connected. But the ARPANET didn’t take off immediately. ![]() The first node of the ARPANET was installed at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1969. ![]() It was a major departure from circuit-switched networks, such as telephone networks, for which communication partners were linked through a dedicated circuit. Packet switching, an approach to communications that breaks messages into discrete chunks, or packets, of data. The ARPANET was one of the first networks to apply You may not have heard of any of these events-but if you were there, you will never forget them. Here we describe a few of these do-or-die moments. Several of these events, such as the first public demo of theĪRPANET in 1972, or the mid-1980s conferences now known as Interop, alerted experts to new technologies, and, in some cases, altered the balance between competing approaches.Īlthough many of these gatherings have escaped the attention of historians, our view is that these events should be recognized more fully as moments where experts could glimpse possible futures and judge for themselves what was most likely to happen. There’s also a parallel tradition-less flashy but no less important-of industry events that focus attention on digital infrastructure. Indeed, hyped-up product announcements at industry events like the Consumer Electronics Show (nowĬES) and the Game Developers Conference have become regular features of the digital world. New technologies often are introduced through spectacle: Think of the historic demonstrations carried out by Faraday, Edison, Morse, and Bell, or, more recently, by Steve Jobs onstage in his black turtleneck at Macworld 2007, holding the first iPhone. ![]()
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