[ih] Internet: 57 years later, what does Professor Kleinrock think of the his creation?

[Karl Auerbach]

On 10/31/26 4:16 AM, vinton cerf via Internet-history wrote:
> The 10/29/1969 was a two node test of the Arpanet and involved connecting a
> terminal at UCLA to a host at SRI Internationa

There is a play, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead", in which two 
characters who have rather little to do with the main plot of the play 
Hamlet, observe the goings on in Castle Elsinore, in Hamlet.

I, rather similarly, had nothing to do with that early IMP phase, and 
even less to do with the UCLA-SRI test, but I may have been close by...

It was very likely that I was in the room next door. During that period 
I was working nights preparing data for the IBM 7094 which lived in the 
room next to IMP #1.  We could hear things through the thin partition 
wall between the rooms - usually we heard the squeals of an AM radio 
that was being overloaded by the RF coming from the computers - but 
sometimes we heard voices.

A bit further away, and of uncertain date, certain members of the UCLA 
Computer Club ... usually led by person who shall remain anonymous and 
known only by the letters "M*rk K*mpe" ... had been dropping 
"interesting" things - superballs frozen in liquid nitrogen, empty 
radiation containers, etc - off the roof of nine-story tall Boelter Hall 
(the landing area was the collection of cars that had been crashed by my 
group, the Institution of Traffic and Transportation Engineering).  That 
Computer Club cadre laid eyes on IMP #1, admired the lifting hooks on 
its top, and became intrigued by the word "ruggedized".  They began to 
wonder whether IMP #1 would make an interesting new item for the 
roof-drop tests.  Fortunately for the Internet (and unfortunately for a 
vending machine repairman) their gaze was distracted by a troublesome 
ice cream vending machine.

         --karl--