[ih] How long did it take?

[Dave Crocker]

On 9/16/2026 4:07 PM, John Day via Internet-history wrote:
> We also all know the story from the ARPANET demo at ICCC72 when Bob Metcalfe was demoing the TIP to several AT&T attendees. The TIP crashed and re-booted from its neighbors. Bob thought this was a great aspect of the system. The AT&T guys thought it showed the ARPANET was a joke and not serious.


Two anecdotes from that event, tied to the above recitation, from the 
perspective of a 22 year-old, non-CS kid working on the UCLA project for 
6 months before the demo, all wide-eyed by the event:

  * I saw a small contingent of guys in similar, boring suits, staying
    in tight formation and looking around, with a palpably arrogant
    tone. I turned to Jon Postel, my office-mate, asking who those guys
    were.  He said ATT.  He said they were certain they could have built
    the net, if they'd felt like it.


  * My job at the demo was to do demos.  I was a floor-walker.  At one
    point, someone hand-off an older gentleman to me, asking that I show
    him the net.  The gentleman was Lipinski, senior of the Institute
    For the Future. (I had no idea who he was, beyond that
    introduction.)  I explained about the TIP, connected to a BBN Tenex
    system, noting it was in Cambridge, did a couple of commands, closed
    the connections, connected to ISI, noting where it was, did a couple
    of commands.  He was visibly bored.  Just then, I stopped getting
    character echoes.  I looked over and saw a small army of BBN guys
    around the TIP.  I told Lipinski that it had crashed and would have
    to be rebooted.  He said he'd go off to a session and come back
    after it was back up.  I said no need, it will be back up in a few
    minutes.  He said that didn't make sense.  They hadn't even rolled
    out a paper tape reader yet.  I explained why they wouldn't -- See
    John's comment above.  Lipinski paused and took this in and I swear
    I saw the light go off.  A normal demo did not teach him about the
    Arpanet.  A TIP crash did.

d/

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Dave Crocker

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