[ih] IEN Notes and INWG

[John Day]

At 10:28 -0400 2010/03/24, Vint Cerf wrote:
>Yes, IEN was for ARPA-sponsored work; INWG was born in Oct 1972 at 
>the ICCC. Crocker declined to chair it because he was about to join 
>ARPA and I was off to Stanford about that time and accepted the 
>chairmanship.
>
>Eventually, INWG was integrated into IFIP as IFIP WG 6.1 with the 
>help of Alex Curran (then the ceo of BNR, Inc - the Palo Alto 
>research subsidiary of Bell-Northern Research).

Right.  I remember when that happened.

>
>As to funding, DARPA provided some funding to Kirstein at UCL but I 
>think a lot of his funds came from the EU and from the UK Science 
>Research Council.
>
>EIN had leadership from the UK National Physical Laboratory staff - 
>Donald Davies and Derek Barber. I am a little less clear on the 
>dates of EIN start - around 1975? earlier?

It was something like that.  Don't think it would have been earlier 
than 75, at least not much.  I can ask Derek.  We are in contact, 
although I don't know how often he checks his email.  But yea, it was 
operated out of NPL.  That is how the Swiss were involved.

I don't know how reliable it is but the good old Wikipedia says it 
became operational in 1976.

(You can tell your age, when you sit here trying to remember when 
that was, or where you have something that would tell you when it 
was.  Then you think, "dummy, look in the Wikipedia!")  ;-) lol.  For 
the younger crowd, that would have been the first thing they did!

I think I have told this before, but my favorite scene from this 
period was at the Ontario Science Center.  We were all there for ICCC 
76 (I think) and I remember turning a corner and finding you, Donald 
Davies and Alex McKenzie prompting some random 10 year old on how to 
set the levers for a mechanical "logic circuit" of AND, OR, and NOT 
gates to get balls to drop out the bottom.  ;-)

I remember standing there enjoying the scene and thinking, "kid, if 
you only knew!"  ;-) lol  I wished I had had a camera!

Take care,
John