[ih] Euro RFCs [was: W3C origins [was: J.C.R. Licklider]]

[vinton cerf]

this is wrong too. The first RFC by a European author is RFC 7:



0007 Host-IMP interface. G. Deloche. May 1969. (Format: TXT, HTML)
     (Status: UNKNOWN) (DOI: 10.17487/RFC0007)

vint cerf


On Sun, Nov 1, 2026 at 10:52 PM Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> BTW, while checking the dates for this I came across the assertion that
> the first RFC by a European author was RFC1405 (January 1993). This
> struck me as implausible, so I checked. I believe it was in fact RFC588
> in October 1973 "LONDON NODE IS NOW UP" when UCL joined ARPANET.
>
> Regards/Ngā mihi
>     Brian Carpenter
>
> On 01-Nov-26 18:07, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> > On 01-Nov-26 15:50, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> >
> >> Speaking of Internet History, the ARPANET et al --- There's another
> >> player from the early days of The Internet that may not be well known to
> >> Internet historians - J.C.R. Licklider
> >
> > He's fully credited in any serious history of the Internet, I think,
> > e.g. Katie Hafner's book.
> >
> >> - Lick's vision was continued after he retired by his "chief of staff"
> >> at MIT, Al Vezza, who convinced Tim Berners-Lee to come to MIT and lead
> >> the W3C from there.
> >
> > I would add that Michael Dertouzos was *at least* as influential as Al
> > in attracting TimBL to MIT. Probably more, because Dertouzos's old pal
> > George Metakides (an MIT alum) was the senior official in the European
> > Commissionin charge of funding the European end of the W3C.
> >
> > My understanding at the time was that Dertouzos and Metakides (they
> > were both Greek) had decided that the main part of the W3C would be at
> > MIT, with European Commission (EC) funding, but with a small European
> > "pole". Metakides thought it would be a fine idea to place the European
> > unit at CERN, but CERN refused to be part of an exercise whose main
> > result would be to send European funds to the USA.
> >
> > Al Vezza was very much in the room for these discussions. I wasn't, but
> > I knew all the CERN participants, and in fact met them in the departure
> > lounge at Brussels airport on their way back from the critical meeting.
> > (I was in Brussels the same day for a meeting related to growing Internet
> > capacity in Europe.) The CERN team in that discussion, from memory, was
> > Mike Sendall, Tim B-L, Robert Cailliau, and Francois Fluckiger. Maybe
> David
> > Williams, our Division Leader, was there too. All of them except Tim were
> > flabbergasted by the idea that CERN (a non-EC institution) should be used
> > to route money from the EC to MIT.
> >
> > I heard within a few days that the CERN management definitely refused
> > this. It seemed politically dangerous and was it even legal? Also it
> seemed
> > outside CERN's mission as a physics laboratory. And nobody missed that
> > Metakides and Dertouzos were buddies. So in the end, INRIA in France
> > acted as the European pole.
> >
> > Regards/Ngā mihi
> >      Brian Carpenter
> >
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