[ih] First file transfer on ARPANET

[Vint Cerf]

IMP data came in packets - it was not a formal file transfer.

v


On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 7:03 PM, Jack Haverty <jack at 3kitty.org> wrote:

> I remember an email conversation I had with one of the original ARPANET
> developers, who mentioned that they moved stuff (files) from one machine to
> another by quickly writing 2 very simple programs.  One would open a
> connection and simply copy whatever bytes arrived into a file.  A similar
> program on the "other" machine would open a connection and read from a
> file, sending bytes to the other guy.   This could be done essentially from
> Day One, coordinating by telephone.
>
> Sorry, I can't remember who it was -- probably Bernie Cosell, Dave Walden,
> or Ben Barker (who may all be listening even now!)
>
> So, depending on how you want to define "first file transfer", it could
> have happened very shortly after the first 2 IMPs were connected.
>
> In addition to what the developers were doing, Kleinrock's UCLA crew were
> collecting statistics from the IMPs, so they may have been doing "file
> transfers" too.   Perhaps Vint remembers more about how that was done?
>
> Of course, after Telnet and remote login were implemented, one could log
> in to a remote machine and do the 2-program kind of file transfer without
> need for telephones.  I suspect that kind of scenario was the precursor to
> the FTP, which used a Telnet control connection to set up and use separate
> data connections -- same kind of approach as the "2 simple programs"
> situation, but automated.
>
> I'd expect that the "first file transfer" was done either by the BBN
> installers, or by someone in UCLA's measurements project, very soon after
> the first IMPs got running, and probably well before "remote login" was
> common.
>
> /Jack
> On Dec 11, 2012 9:47 PM, "Richard Bennett" <richard at bennett.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Historians,
>>
>> I'm curious about when the first file transfer was done successfully on
>> ARPANET. Given that the initial focus was remote login, I'm guessing that
>> rudimentary file transfers wouldn't have been done until sometime in 1970.
>> Does anyone remember?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> RB
>>
>> --
>> Richard Bennett
>>
>>
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