[ih] Peter Salus / Baran's work

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Brian E Carpenter

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

I've been puzzling over this a bit, and I wonder if the problem isn't a
conflation between 'we didn't know about it' and 'it must not have been
talked about'. It's certainly clear that in the beginning the US people were
not aware of Baran's work - but I wonder if they just assumed that they
hadn't heard of it because it wasn't talked about?

I wonder if that was because computer people (who were the group who
eventually took up Baran's ideas) may not have read a 'Communication' journal
(which was possibly focused towards telephone/etc people)?

And when they did find out about it, the form they got it was in the RAND
reports, which they might have assumed were not widely distributed, or
something - therefore not even realizing, at that stage, that it had been
previously described in the open professional literature.

It is certainly ironic that the US people (Taylor, Roberts, etc) had to learn
about Baran's work by way of Davies and Scantlebury, from another country -
via someone at the British MoD - it's too bad we don't know who that was.


    > (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.)

I do have that (while I thought it was a good book, I was irked by it because
I noticed a number of small errors, which was extremely disappointing, because
he could have had readers who could have caught them, and it mars an otherwise
excellent work; it makes me wonder if his Jobs bio is the same).

Yes, his coverage of both of those topics (Kleinrock, and the nuclear war
meme) is very good, and IMO, correct. Hopefully future writers will follow his
lead on both of these! :-)

	Noel