[ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work

[Vint Cerf]

see bibliography of this 1970 paper

http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1480000/1477020/p543-roberts.pdf

v

On Fri, Jan 9, 2015 at 8:23 PM, John Day <jeanjour at comcast.net> wrote:

> 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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>
>
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