Team Altman :: History Before the World Wide Web
Internet Visionary: Lawrence G. Roberts
I have decided to pick Lawrence G. Roberts as my Internet Visionary. He was gifted with the drive to tinker and build as his interests in telephone technology and networking started at an early age. When Roberts was an undergrad at MIT, he helped “the Computation Center build some equipment to convert an automatic tape unit attached to an analog tape into the 704”[3] for a summer job. The TX 2 was the first transistor computer brought to MIT and this was the beginning of Roberts computer interaction. Since there was no plan on how people would use this system Roberts started figuring out how it worked and spent his time understanding how an operating system worked. He graduated from MIT in 1959 and went on to obtain his graduate and Ph.D in electrical engineering by 1963.
According to Roberts, in 1962 “the origin of the ARPANET thinking and work” originated at a conference at Homestead in Virginia held by the Air Force. He mentions that the group stayed up all night talking about the future of the internet. Many of the people at the conference were involved with Time-Sharing. Roberts later joined ARPA in 1966 and started working with communication problems and focused on the major issues with networking, for example, slow telephone lines. He was the chief scientist in the ARPA Information Processing Techniques Office. At ARPA he had developed the first computer-to-computer network, with his development team, which could communicate via data packets.
When Roberts became the ARPA IPTO Chief Scientist he started to design the APRANET. In December 1966 this was proposed to congress, by Roberts, to create a reliable network. Part of developing reliability in a network was breaking up the information into packets and using a system other than circuit switching. The new switching technique to be explored was packet switching. With this method 50% of the network could be inoperable and still the packets would be deliverable.
In Oct 1968 Roberts awarded the ARPANET Packet Switch Contract to BBN. By 1970 ARPANET spanned the USA with four Nodes at UCLA, SRI, UCSB, and fourth at University of Utah. Lastly, in 1970, ARPANET connects BBN into the network. Robert leaves ARPANET in 1973 to work for Telenet, the first packet switching carrier, and becomes the CEO.
Roberts is an amazing engineer and has always strove for the bigger picture and understanding of computers on all levels. He “received the Draper Prize in 2001 “for the development of the Internet” along with Leonard Kleinrock, Robert Kahn, and Vinton Cerf.” (Wikipedia) His drive for knowledge and interest in communication helped greatly in the advancement of the internet.
References for Internet Visionary: Lawrence G. Roberts:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Roberts_%28scientist%29
[2] http://www.cbi.umn.edu/oh/pdf.phtml?id=233
[3] http://www.ziplink.net/users/lroberts/InternetChronology.html
