[ih] MAP & BBN

[Vint Cerf]

I thought it was reasonable to assert that Ray Tomlinson invented
networked email, Alex - do you see it differently?

vint



On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 5:55 PM, Alex McKenzie <amckenzie3 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Bill,
>
> I know MAP was perpetually annoyed by BBN and always felt BBN claimed to
> have invented everything.  I was at BBN the entire time and I always felt
> most of Mike's criticism was unjustified.  BBN wrote a lot of papers, with
> ARPAs strong encouragement, about what we did do, and BBN did a lot.  We
> didn't write about what others did- that was up to them.  So if others
> didn't write so much, the written history got kind of BBN-centric.
>
> One notable exception:  Ray Tomlinson was credited by a lot of non-BBN
> people with "inventing email" and Mike was justifiably upset every time he
> heard that claim.  Mike seems to have blamed BBN for making that claim.
> However, I think you can look as carefully as you want at BBN publications
> and you will not find that claim made by BBN.
>
> Sincerely,
> Alex
>
> ________________________________
> From: Bill Ricker <bill.n1vux at gmail.com>
> To: David Elliott Bell <bell1945 at offthisweek.com>
> Cc: "internet-history at postel.org" <internet-history at postel.org>
> Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2012 10:59 PM
> Subject: Re: [ih] Hesitating to disagree with one of the fathers of the
> Internet…..
>
> On Thu, May 10, 2012 at 5:34 PM, David Elliott Bell
> <bell1945 at offthisweek.com> wrote:
>
> the need for layers (3 will do if you know what you're going; if you don't,
> 11 won't help you);
>
>
> Correction, it is canonically '17 won't help you' .
> The ironic allusion to the hol(e)y 7 of the Other Reference Model ("ISORM")
> makes this MAPhorism much funnier than mere exaggeration.
>
> a world view about which layers and the rigidity required to enforce layers;
> proposing alternate protocols for achieving a desired goal; things like that
> are part of design-ARPANET.
>
>
> Mike having come to protocol design and programming via poetry rather than
> prosaic electrical engineering, yes, he viewed layering as the design, as
> the essense. The fact that both the IMPs and NCP have been retired but the
> network that  (D)ARPA wrought lives on as "the Internet", over a hybrid
> hodgepodge of physical subnets, militates that his logical view of The Net
> has won out over the physical, just as the pragmatic, good-enough ARM has
> won out of the overly baroque OSI ISORM .
>
> However ...
>
> The Popular History of the Net has largely been told from the BBN POV. As an
> editorial/authorial decision, this is understandably so, much though it may
> annoy those who worked on upper layers. Having a for-profit's PR office on
> the case doesn't hurt, but that is not solely responsible. It's easier to
> follow BBN'S  IMP/TIP narrative than a narrative spread over several
> campuses and multiple OS's no one uses anymore, and far easier to explain
> challenges of hardware than challenges of software to a general audience. I
> have corroboration on that bald assertion -- Tracey Kidder interviewed the
> DG 'Eagle' operating system team manager while researching 'Soul of the New
> Machine', and couldn't figure out how to explain it, so went back to
> focusing on hardware and microcode teams. Networking may be easier to make
> metaphor than an OS, but not compared to modems.
>
> [I worked for said DG manager at his next gig, and volunteered with a
> 'microkid' a few years later. The microkid taught me to drink cognac at ACM
> committee meetings; Mike's whisky lessons cured me of that quickly.]
>
> --
> Bill
> @n1vux bill.n1vux at gmail.com
>
>