[ih] Hourglass model question

[Craig Partridge]

Related but not quite on target.

The hourglass/margarita glass is a representation of layering.  And back in
1988 I tried to figure out the origins of the layered model for a
collection of networking papers I edited.  At the time, the best answer I
found was that layering, from a networking perspective, originated with a
paper by Davidson et al. on the ARPANET TELNET protocol from the DATACOM
conference in 1977.  It portrays layering as a fan, in which different
protocols layer on each other as needed.  But it clearly articulates the
notion of layering and how layers interact.  (And there's a narrow window
between the 1977 paper and the Cerf/Kahn 1974 paper on TCP/IP, which
presumably would have mentioned layering if the concept was in wide use).

Craig

On Wed, Jul 3, 2019 at 8:10 AM Andrew Russell <arussell at arussell.org> wrote:

> Hi everyone -
>
> You might have seen the CACM featured an article in the most recent issue
> “On the Hourglass Model” -
> https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2019/7/237714-on-the-hourglass-model/fulltext
> .
>
> It’s not a history paper, but it raised a history-related question for
> me.  As far as I know the visual representation in question started with a
> drawing of a margarita glass in 1979, in the context of an OSI committee
> meeting and the 7-layer model. I reproduced the image on page 214 of my
> book “Open Standards and the Digital Age” - it’s visible to me here:
> https://books.google.com/books?id=jqroAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA214&lpg=PA214.
>
> My question for the list has 2 parts:
> 1) when/where did the margarita glass turn into an hourglass?
> 2) when/where did the TCP/IP community borrow it from the OSI community?
>  (I’m assuming this is how it happened, would be very interested in
> evidence or recollections to the contrary)
>
> My hunch, without doing a fresh round of research, is that I should look
> first to papers by David Clark and co-authors in the 1980s to answer a
> third question, which is how this illustrated concept morphed into a
> “Theorem” (as the CACM essay puts it).  But that’s just a hunch, and I’d
> really appreciate pointers or recollections.
>
> Thank you!
>
> Andy
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