[ih] Looking for F. Yates and P. Baran paper

[John Kristoff]

In February 2012, I had posted to this list:

> In Paul Baran's paper entitled "Reliable Digital Communications Systems
> Using Unreliable Network Repeater Nodes", published May 27, 1960 as
> P-1995 by RAND, he refers to two other papers.  One in particular is
> co-authored by Frank Yates and Paul Baran entitled "A Non Synchronous
> Digital Data Link Transmission System Using Randomly Surviving Relay
> Points".

> I don't seem able to locate a copy of it and I'm interested in reading
> it.  Does anyone know if it is available online or how I might obtain a
> copy if possible?  Thank you,

A month ago, a colleague Ryan Moss asked if I had ever found the
seemingly lost RAND Report P-1996.  When I indicated I followed the
trail a bit further.  Posted here with permission, for which I'm
grateful:

  I've still had no luck finding Baran's P-1996 report, but I did come
  across an interesting footnote in a 1995 paper written by Judy O'Neill
  in the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, "The Role of ARPA in the
  Development of the ARPANET, 1961-1972". It reads: /There has been some
  confusion as to the status of these reports/ [P-1995 thru -1997?]/.
  [Lawrence] Roberts reported that they were classified and not generally
  available... However, most were not classified and they seem to have
  been somewhat available as Davies was given a copy when he was
  circulating his reports in 1965, Walden says BBN used Baran as a
  starting point for their network discussions, and Baran notes that all
  government depositories had a copy of all RAND reports./

  I did call RAND's Publications Customer Service a few weeks ago and gave
  them both the report number and title, but they said they didn't have a
  record of it.

In the hopes this is of any particular interest to current or future
Internet archaeologists.

John