[ih] MAP & BBN

[Dave Walden]

Dave Crocker has a website that points to several 
documents on the long history of contributions by 
various people to the "invention" of email as we know it today:
     http://emailhistory.org/
Most inventions involve prior technology; but as 
Dave noted to me recently, some come into 
existence relatively fully developed by one 
person or a small group of people, while others 
(like email) take a lot of small steps from here 
and there over a protracted period of time to 
reach a fairly fully developed state.

At 08:05 PM 5/11/2012, Alex McKenzie wrote:
>Ray is generally acknowledged to have been the 
>first person to build/adapt and demonstrate 
>programs to transfer messages from one computer 
>to another via the ARPAnet, and to use the 
>symbol "@" to denote the specific computer where 
>the intended recipient had an account.  But the 
>transfer of messages from one computer user to 
>another within a single computer was many years 
>older, and this was email too, as MAP correctly 
>pointed out. A recent article in the IEEE Annals 
>of the History of Computing talks about several 
>of the earlier single-computer message systems.
>
>
>From: Vint Cerf <vint at google.com>
>To: Alex McKenzie <amckenzie3 at yahoo.com>
>Cc: Bill Ricker <bill.n1vux at gmail.com>; 
>"internet-history at postel.org" <internet-history at postel.org>
>Sent: Friday, May 11, 2012 6:41 PM
>Subject: Re: [ih] MAP & BBN
>
>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 
><<mailto:amckenzie3 at yahoo.com>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 <<mailto:bill.n1vux at gmail.com>bill.n1vux at gmail.com>
> > To: David Elliott Bell 
> <<mailto:bell1945 at offthisweek.com>bell1945 at offthisweek.com>
> > Cc: 
> "<mailto:internet-history at postel.org>internet-history at postel.org" 
> <<mailto: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 Ellliott Bell
> > <<mailto:bell1945 at offthisweek.com>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 <mailto:bill.n1vux at gmail.com>bill.n1vux at gmail.com
> >
> >
>


--
home address: 12 Linden Rd., E. Sandwich, MA 02537
home ph=508-888-7655; cell ph = 503-757-3137
email address:  dave at walden-family.com; website: 
<http://www.walden-family.com/bbn/>http://www.walden-family.com/bbn/  
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