[ih] Fw: History from 1960s to 2025 (role of NCAR and other labs)

Guy Almes galmes at tamu.edu
Thu Dec 18 13:32:13 PST 2025 

Craig et al.,
   This 
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-decry-trumps-plan-to-kill-crucial-atmospheric-science-center/> 
from Scientific American confirms the news story I referred to in my 
initial post.
   Polite language doesn't suffice to express my opinion of the 
administration's move.
   But this list is about history, not politics.

   As I shared with another person, I like it when my politics is 
informed by historical insight.  I am skeptical when my historical 
insights are informed by my politics.

   I do look forward to other contributions to the thread.
   While I concur with the emphasis on "plumbing", you cannot (IMHO) 
understand the rise of the Internet without understanding its 
relationship with the research university/lab world.
	-- Guy

On 12/18/25 1:36 PM, Craig Partridge via Internet-history wrote:
> Hi Alex:
> 
> I don't know the full sequence as I joined the CSNET technical team after
> BBN took over.  But the rough background, as I understand it is:
> 
> 
>     - Initially, NSF awarded CSNET to someone (I'm guessing UCAR) to oversee
>     two sites that created the initial CSNET - there were machines on both
>     sides of the US (I think one at Rand  on the west -- don't recall if east
>     coast was UDel or somewhere else -- Wisconsin was also involved?).
>     - That divided management got CSNET up and going but proved
>     operationally painful and so it was decided to consolidate the contract
>     with one experienced corporate provider -- which ended up being BBN (and it
>     may have been BBN had been considered in the earlier round, per your note
>     -- I don't know).
>     - The CSNET machines were shipped from the two sites to BBN, which then
>     operated CSNET for the rest of its lifetime.
> 
> Craig
> 
> On Thu, Dec 18, 2025 at 11:22 AM Alexander McKenzie via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> 
>> I think an interesting question is " *Why* did UCAR have the contract from
>> NSF to operate (oversee) CSNET?" It is my understanding that NSF wanted to
>> award a contract to BBN (because BBN was already operating ARPAnet) to
>> operate CSNET, but that NSF rules did not allow giving (or made it
>> extremely difficult to give) a contract to a commercial company to build or
>> operate anything; NSF's charter was to sponsor research at "research
>> institutions."  UCAR was a "research institution" that already was
>> receiving NSF funding and was agreeable to do networking research for NSF
>> by writing a contract to a commercial company after going through the
>> official procurement process of soliciting and evaluating proposals. Being
>> from BBN, I like to believe BBN's proposal to UCAR was the best on its
>> merits, but it is possible selection pressure was exhibited by NSF; maybe
>> someone closer to the process can explain more.  But I assume NSF had
>> several institutions other than UCAR that could have been asked to work on
>> this problem, so the above summary of the procedure doesn't answer the "Why
>> UCAR?" question.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Alex
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 18, 2025 at 12:55 PM Alex McKenzie <amckenzie3 at yahoo.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >
>> > ----- Forwarded Message -----
>> > *From:* Craig Partridge via Internet-history <
>> > internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
>> > *To:* Guy Almes <galmes at tamu.edu>
>> > *Cc:* "internet-history at elists.isoc.org" <
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>> > >
>> > *Sent:* Thursday, December 18, 2025 at 12:10:20 PM EST
>> > *Subject:* Re: [ih] History from 1960s to 2025 (role of NCAR and other
>> > labs)
>> >
>> > UCAR had the contract from NSF to operate CSNET (stated perhaps more
>> > clearly, CSNET, predecessor /partial-prototype to NSF regionals, was
>> > overseen by UCAR).
>> > Craig
>> >
>> > On Thu, Dec 18, 2025 at 9:54 AM Guy Almes via Internet-history <
>> > internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>> >
>> > > Jack,
>> > >    This is all so valuable.  It touches on the community to be
>> > > connected, but aims primarily at the evolution of technical
>> foundations.
>> > >    I'm going to aim at the community part, based in part on a recent
>> > > news story.
>> > >
>> > > On 12/17/25 5:17 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>> > > > The January/February 2026 issue of Foreign Affairs contains an
>> article
>> > > > titled "How China Wins The Future".  ...
>> > > >
>> > > > Here's my thoughts -- based of course only on my personal experience.
>> > > > I'd love to know what I got wrong or missed.
>> > > >
>> > > > - 1960s: Licklider creates his vision of Intergalactic Network; ARPA
>> > > > creates the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), which
>> > > > initiates the creation of ARPANET.
>> > > Note that it starts with a community to be connected.  For Licklider,
>> it
>> > > was ARPA and the community of scientists funded by ARPA.  This could be
>> > > trivialized by focusing on the menagerie of computer terminals and
>> > > modems that Lick had to log in to various computers, but it was surely
>> > > deeper.  One historic healthy outcome of the postwar United States was
>> > > the rise of systematic federal funding of science.  Whether researchers
>> > > in various fields were aware of it, there was a rapidly emerging
>> science
>> > > community that shared federal funding, but also shared a growing need
>> > > for effective collaboration among scientists in various disciplines and
>> > > various localities.
>> > >    Reflecting on the impact of this on the American and international
>> > > university research communities, I'd sometimes playfully note that the
>> > > US research university community was actually a very odd highly
>> > > decentralized organization.
>> > >    (At a meeting of networking leaders in Ireland circa 2001, a speaker
>> > > noted that there were elements of this present in the medieval
>> > > university world.  Patterns such as sending your best students to get
>> > > their advanced degrees in other universities and such as everyone
>> > > speaking a common second language (Latin then, English now), were
>> > > significant.  But I'll return to the special energy behind the postwar
>> > > situation.)
>> > >    One special player in this is NCAR.
>> > >    I am not an expert on NCAR and would very much like to hear from
>> > > others who know more about the role it played and is playing.
>> > >
>> > >    In 1987, when I was at Rice University cobbling together one of the
>> > > NSFnet-related "regional networks", we were suffering from a highly
>> > > congested 56kb/s ARPAnet while waiting for the promised T1-based NSFnet
>> > > Backbone.  So, to complement our ARPAnet connection, NSF kindly set up
>> a
>> > > 56kb/s connection of the prototype Fuzzball-based NSFnet backbone.  The
>> > > specific connection was to the backbone node at NCAR in Boulder,
>> > > Colorado.  I had not been aware of NCAR much, but as this intense
>> period
>> > > of Internet building continued, I became more and more aware of it.
>> > >    Evidently, NCAR was a creature of UCAR, the University Corporation
>> > > for Atmospheric Research.  UCAR, in turn, was a creature of atmospheric
>> > > science departments from across the country.  I do not pretend to
>> > > understand the bureaucratic details, but a few things were clear:
>> > > <> these departments and researchers had a deep need to share data,
>> > > computational resources, and other infrastructure, even acting on this
>> > > in 1960, when computer networks were not on the horizon.
>> > > <> NCAR has a neat campus "sort of" in Boulder, but on the top of a
>> mesa
>> > > and not even convenient to get at from Boulder, never mind any other
>> > > university in the country.  Its physical situation almost cried out for
>> > > a network.
>> > > <> It served as a sort of NSF Supercomputer Center even before there
>> was
>> > > an NSF Supercomputer Center program, even anticipating the 1983 Lax
>> > Report.
>> > > <> It seemed to have deeply understood the strategic value of
>> > > collaboration among atmospheric science departments at a large number
>> of
>> > > universities.
>> > > <> Among other things, this meant that NCAR was a natural contributor
>> > > and beneficiary of the use of computing and computer networking in
>> > > connecting a nationwide and worldwide atmospheric science community.
>> > > <> It also fostered the UCAR Unidata project, which used the Internet
>> to
>> > > share atmospheric data across universities and labs across the country.
>> > > <> I suspect that the 1950s International Geophysical Year had a role
>> in
>> > > creating UCAR and NCAR.  Oh, and also Sputnik, but that's another
>> story.
>> > >
>> > >    Let me stop there.
>> > >    My narrow request is for a better understanding of how NCAR emerged
>> > > and how it began to contribute to networking even before any modern
>> > > computer networks existed.
>> > >    My broader request is for other examples of how specific scientific
>> > > communities with their need for effective collaboration and sharing of
>> > > data and resources helped create the motivation for building the
>> > > Internet, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s.  So community pull as a
>> > > complement to our usual story of technology push.
>> > >        -- Guy
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