[ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work

[Brian E Carpenter]

On 10/01/2015 12:04, Noel Chiappa wrote:
...
> I mean, I didn't know of the '64 IEEE publication until Paulina pointed it
> out; I had always assumed the meme was correct.

I pulled out my copy of "Casting the Net" by Peter Salus, 1995 edition.
Page 6:

"The Department [of Defense] wanted a survivable national network.
Studies were commissioned and, in 1962, Paul Baran and his colleagues
at the RAND Corporation produced 13 reports and (for security reasons)
published only 11 of them ("On Distributed Communications 1964)..."

and indeed the reference is to the IEEE Trans CS paper.

So, in 1995 Peter knew that they were published in the early 1960s.

The paper is also cited in "where wizards stay up late" (Hafner & Lyon 1996).

So, the meme is indeed puzzling and far from universal.

(BTW, there is some discussion of the military vs civilian origins of the
ARPANET project in Walter Isaacson's recent book "The Innovators." Not
to mention an interesting discussion of Kleinrock's contribution vs
Baran and Davies.)

   Brian

> 
> Interestingly, "The ARPANET Sourcebook" also includes a very interesting
> note by Willis Ware of RAND (pp. 70-71) which makes quite plain that the
> 11-volume set was publicly available from the start, and also widely
> distributed ("At that time, RAND document distribution always included a
> lengthy list of deposit campus and urban libraries"). However, Willis'
> note does not mention the publication in the IEEE journal.
> 
> The IEEE paper also clearly referenced thee complete set, and indicated that
> it was "intended to release the volumes as a set"
> 
> As to why Baran's work took a while to be noticed, my _guess_ is that Baran's
> focus on survivability may have led people to assume that his ideas had no
> relevance to networks intended for 'general' use, so it had little impact when
> first published - but that's just a quess.
> 
> And as far as the meme goes, the fact that tiny portions of the large 1964
> RAND publications on Baran's work _were_ classified may have somehow gotten
> conflated in the general mind with the report as a whole.
> 
> 
> However, hopefully, if it keeps being pointed out that the introductory
> document from the RAND set was published in an IEEE journal, eventually the
> meme that 'Baran's work was classified and not widely distributed' will be
> extinguished.
> 
> 	Noel
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