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

[Jack Haverty]

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the additional info on W3C.   All of that occurred before Al 
contacted me, so I didn't know anything about it.  FYI, here's another 
view of that founding part of the W3C history, from Dave Walden's 
interview of Al Vezza in 2012.  You're mentioned in it:

https://www.walden-family.com/ieee/galley-proof-anhc-34-2-intv.pdf

There was quite a bit of politics involved in the History of The 
Internet -- what Lick called the "Multinet".

/Jack Haverty


On 10/31/26 22:07, 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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