No credit for Uncle Sam in creating Net? Vint Cerf disagrees

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http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57479781-93/no-credit-for-uncle-sam-in-creating-net-vint-cerf-disagrees/

Q: In his Wall Street Journal column, Gordon Crovitz writes that the federal government's involvement in the creation of the Internet was modest. Does that jibe with your recollection?

Vint Cerf: No. The United States government via ARPA started the project. (Bob Kahn initiated the Internetting project when he joined ARPA in late 1972. He had been principal architect of the ARPANET IMP (packet switch) while at BBN.

Bob invited me to work with him on open networking in the spring of 1973. We also both worked on the ARPANET project starting in 1968. ARPANET was funded through 1990 by ARPA and other USG agencies. The Internet work was funded from 1973 to about 1995 (and beyond) by ARPA, NSF, DOE, NASA among others. It took 10 years of work to get from the original paper published in May 1974 to the rollout of the Internet operationally on January 1, 1983. It combined the ARPANET, MILNET, some number of Ethernets, two Packet Radio networks, the Packet Satellite network, and other local networks in England and Norway. Note that University College London and the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment were involved in the implementation and testing of TCP/IP as was Stanford and BBN.

The NSF got very involved in 1985 and this led to the design and implementation and subsequent expansion of the NSFNET that became a major backbone for academic access to the Internet. NSF also sponsored more than a dozen intermediate level regional networks. By 1986, router companies such as Cisco and Proteon were selling to academia and the military and to USG-sponsored networking users. By 1989, three commercial Internet service providers were in operation: UUNET, PSINET, and CERFNET.

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1. And for those who love Republican canards, here's a blast from the past: Cerf on Al Gore

http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~fessler/misc/funny/gore,net.txt

Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the
Internet and to promote and support its development. . .

Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role.
He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the
initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people have
argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover,
there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's
initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving
Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and
promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it
is timely to offer our perspective.

As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed
telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the
improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official
to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact
than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. Though easily
forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial
concept. Our work on the Internet started in 1973 and was based on even
earlier work that took place in the mid-late 1960s. But the Internet, as
we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still
in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided
intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential
benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an example, he
sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in
areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural
disasters and other crises.

As a Senator in the 1980s Gore urged government agencies to consolidate
what at the time were several dozen different and unconnected networks
into an "Interagency Network." Working in a bi-partisan manner with
officials in Ronald Reagan and George Bush's administrations, Gore secured
the passage of the High Performance Computing and Communications Act in
1991. This "Gore Act" supported the National Research and Education
Network (NREN) initiative that became one of the major vehicles for the
spread of the Internet beyond the field of computer science.

. . . more

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2. Nice post.... n/t