[ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work

[John Day]

One could say that it is a testament to the quality of scholarship in todays world.

OTOH, Noel, you may as well give up.  Durer’s Rhinoceros has been being reproduced as an accurate picture of a rhino for 500 years and we have known since it was first produced that it didn’t have a horn protruding from between its shoulders.

If we can’t squelch that, you don’t stand a chance.  ;-)


> On Jan 9, 2015, at 18:04, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
>> From: Brian E Carpenter
> 
>> I just checked in my copy of "Computer Networks and Their Protocols"
>> by Davies et al., (1979) and they cite the 1964 Baran paper and the
>> RAND reports, on page 47, as "the first full description of [packet
>> switching]". So it's not like this was arcane knowledge.
> 
> So, if not, why is the meme that Baran's work was 'classified and not
> widely available' so common (and, given the evidence of the '64 IEEE
> publication, apparently entirely wrong)?
> 
> I mean, I didn't know of the '64 IEEE publication until Paulina pointed it
> out; I had always assumed the meme was correct.
> 
> 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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