[ih] ARPAnet and nuclear survivability

[Larry Press]

Vint Cerf wrote:
> larry roberts confirms that the purpose of arpanet was resource sharing.

In 1996, I read over some old papers and wrote an article called 
"Seeding Networks: the Federal Role," Communications of the ACM, pp 
11-18, Vol 39., No. 10, October, 1996, 
http://bpastudio.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/articles/govt.htm.


After reading those papers, I concluded:

"It is often stated that ARPA's interest in networking was motivated by 
the need for a military communication system that could withstand 
attack. While that motivation was clearly stated in a series of Air 
Force reports by Paul Baran [2] outlining the packet-switching 
architecture (analogous to the torn paper-tape telegraph systems of the 
day) that was chosen for the ARPANET, it was not what motivated the 
ARPANET. The goal stated in most ARPANET papers is resource sharing. 
With the exception of Larry Roberts, the importance of email, the killer 
application, was generally unanticipated by the original technicians 
(though not by Licklider). Robustness under attack was a TCP/IP goal, 
but that came later".



For example, Roberts and Wessler wrote this article:

Roberts, Lawrence G., and Wessler, Barry D., "Computer Network 
Development to Achieve Resource Sharing," Proceedings of the 1970 Spring 
Joint Computer Conference, 543-549.

Lar