[ih] Historical fiction

[Bernie Cosell]

On 12 May 2012 at 9:42, Dave Walden wrote:

> 1. My memory is that part of the "excuse" for ARPA building the 
> ARPANET was because each ot their contractors wanted their own big 
> computer system, and the ARPANET was supposed to get them to share 
> resources on fewer big computer systems, i.e., with ARPA having to 
> fund fewer computer facilities.

At the time we were working on it, I didn't know anything about 
Licklider's papers and I'm sure that that's what I was told [perhaps by 
Larry Roberts directly, I forget].  The two things that I recall being 
mentioned were the Illiac IV, which ARPA was for-sure only going to make  
[at most..:o)] one of and so they wanted to be able to use the ARPAnet to 
allow researchers around the country to submit jobs for it.  And the AI 
folk --  I don't recall the details on that one so well, but apparently 
every AI project they were funding was asking for a PDP-10 [to run either 
SAIL or BBN-Lisp].

  /bernie\

-- 
Bernie Cosell                     Fantasy Farm Fibers
mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com     Pearisburg, VA
    -->  Too many people, too few sheep  <--