[ih] ARPA/IPTO personnel history

[Steve Crocker]

On Fri, Nov 26, 2021 at 8:24 PM the keyboard of geoff goodfellow via
Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> in reading Alex's 2013 paper on the History of the Internet yours truly saw mention
> as to who was the first IPTO director (Lick) and then immediate mention
> that  Robert W. ‘‘Bob’’ Taylor (1932– ) became the third IPTO director in
> 1966 -- but with no mention as to who was the second IPTO director... so
> over to Wikipedia it was and yours truly found at
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Processing_Techniques_Office
>
> under "Later history
>
> Ivan Sutherland replaced J. C. R. Licklider as IPTO's director when Licklider
> left ARPA in 1964.[7][8] Sutherland was 26 years old at the time.
> Bob Taylor was hired as Sutherland's assistant in 1965 and became director in
> 1966.[9]
>
> #1.) it would seem of benefit that this part of IPTO's history could/needs to
> be further flushed out to include all prior directors and their
> assistants, say starting with Bob Kahn, Steve Crocker, ...?
>

Even though IPTO was a small office, it would take a fair bit of work to
assemble the IPTO personnel history.  I was in the office for only three
years, mid 1971 to mid 1974.  Here's as much of the personnel history as I
can recall quickly from memory.

Directors:
1. JCR Licklider
2. Ivan Sutherland
3. Bob Taylor
4. Larry Roberts
5. Lick again
6. Dave Russell
7. Bob Kahn
...
In some order that I don't have handy,

   - Saul Amaral
   - Jack Schwartz
   - ,,,

Almost all of the non-clerical people in the office were program managers.
A couple of exceptions are noted below.

Program Managers
Art Bushkin
Barry Wessler
Cordell Green
Bruce Dolan
John Perry
Steve Crocker
Bob Kahn
Peggy Karp
Dave Carlstrom
Bill Carlson
Steve Walker
Craig Fields
Vint Cerf
Duane Adams
Ron Ohlander
Steve Squires
Larry Druffel
Bill Scherlis
Brian Boesch
Hilarie Orman
Kirstie Bellman
and many more.

While I was in the office, Al Blue was a senior non-technical guy who
handled our budget, the interactions with the contracting process and
generally kept things running smoothly.  He was super smart. self effacing
and a delight to work with.  We often said if all of us technical
people disappeared, he could keep the place running for quite a while based
on his knowledge of the budget, the track record of the principal
investigators, and his skill in dealing with the government bureaucracy.
He was a history buff and I believe he wrote a book about B-24s in World
War II.

Gene Stubbs was another senior non-technical person we recruited from one
of the contracting ships.

My apologies to anyone I left out.

Steve