[ih] IMP at UCL (Was Honeywell 516 ARPANET IMP cabinet)

[Vint Cerf]

Yes, Jon, Peter did have to take on a unaccustomed official role to receive
the equipment and avoid taxes.

v


On Tue, Aug 26, 2025 at 12:56 AM Jon Crowcroft <jon.crowcroft at cl.cam.ac.uk>
wrote:

> I was told it was taken to a US airbase in the UK and used for target
> practice, so it had neither been re-exported, nor had it been handed to
> someone for further use as comms kit...I'm not sure how to verify this
>
> another part of this story is that to get the kit in the first place,
> Peter Kirstein had to become an official Post Office...(I remember him
> talking about this part, so it must be true:-)
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 25, 2025, at 9:22 PM, Ole Jacobsen wrote:
>
> Someone associated with UCL (such as Jon Crowcroft copied here) can
> give further details/corrections, but this is my understanding:
>
> At the end of the ARPANET project at University College London
> (UCL), their IMP was decommissioned and basically ready for the
> scrap heap. There was only one problem: Since the equipment had been
> imported without any duty under a research agreement, and since
> returning it to the US would have been expensive and pointless,
> representatives of Her Majesty's Government was contacted to have the
> IMP officially destroyed.
>
> (I have this image in my mind of a warehouse where they temporarily store
> contraband before it is burned...)
>
> Jon can hopefully tell us more :-)
>
> Ole
>
>
> Ole J. Jacobsen
> Editor and Publisher
> The Internet Protocol Journal
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> E-mail: ole at protocoljournal.org
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

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