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Who invented the Internet?

PRB

PRB

Administrator
Staff member
Been reading this fascinating book by Michael Hiltzik called Dealers of Lightning, Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age. It's the story of the people behind Xerox's Palo-Alto Research Center (PARC), inventors of the mouse and the windowed operating system, among other things (and the laser printer).

One of the key people in this story is a man named Robert Taylor, who, in 1966, was the director of the Information Processing Technologies office at ARPA. One day in February of 1966, Taylor walked into the office Charles Herzfeld, the director of ARPA. He had an idea. He wanted to “connect” the main frame computers of various research facilities around the country. It would be as though users of their system were simply users on our system here. Imagine! Herzfeld only wanted to know how much money he needed to get the project started. “About a million dollars”, was the answer. “You've got it.” That was it, THE moment. A twenty minute meeting. He should have noted the exact time of day for history! Taylor hired (some say black mailed) a young MIT computer engineer named Larry Roberts into coming to ARPA to actually start designing it. Isn't that interesting?

- Paul
 
PRB said:
Been reading this fascinating book by Michael Hiltzik called Dealers of Lightning, Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age. It's the story of the people behind Xerox's Palo-Alto Research Center (PARC), inventors of the mouse and the windowed operating system, among other things (and the laser printer).

One of the key people in this story is a man named Robert Taylor, who, in 1966, was the director of the Information Processing Technologies office at ARPA. One day in February of 1966, Taylor walked into the office Charles Herzfeld, the director of ARPA. He had an idea. He wanted to “connect” the main frame computers of various research facilities around the country. It would be as though users of their system were simply users on our system here. Imagine! Herzfeld only wanted to know how much money he needed to get the project started. “About a million dollars”, was the answer. “You've got it.” That was it, THE moment. A twenty minute meeting. He should have noted the exact time of day for history! Taylor hired (some say black mailed) a young MIT computer engineer named Larry Roberts into coming to ARPA to actually start designing it. Isn't that interesting?

- Paul
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The internet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet) was invented in the US, the www world wide web (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web) was invented in Europe - US :salute: and Europe :salute:rule!
Sascha
 
Terry said:
Are you saying Al Gore lied to us? :isadizzy:
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I thought about making a reference to our esteemed former Vice President, but I knew I could count on the fine people here to take care of that for me... :icon_lol:

One of the “sub-plots” of this story is how Xerox squandered the priceless resource they had at PARC over the years. When PARC was established, Xerox already had a research lab at Rochester, NY, focused on making better copy machines, not on research into completely new technologies. They setup PARC as a separate entity from their in-house research arm precisely because they didn't want it to be dominated and stifled by the “copier mafia” at Rochester. So over at Rochester, this guy named Gary Starkweather comes up with the idea of transmitting computer data to a device with a laser inside, which would “print” the information, very quickly, onto paper. You would think even the Rochester group would have been interested in this, but they were not. They even threatened Starkweather with his job if he kept “messing around with that laser nonsense”! So he got himself transferred to PARC, where he invented the laser printer, making gazillions of dollars for Xerox. Amazing.

- Paul
 
PRB said:
Herzfeld only wanted to know how much money he needed to get the project started. “About a million dollars”, was the answer. “You've got it.” That was it...
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.

WHAT? No Environmental Impact statement?!?!?!

- H52
 
Terry said:
Are you saying Al Gore lied to us? :isadizzy:
Click to expand...

Nope, Al Gore NEVER said he invented the internet, not at all. he did claim credit for pushing legislation to help "create" it, but there is a huge difference between inventing and creating. Same as President Eisenhower didn't invent the current highway system we have today, but he did create it.:applause: Here is a good summation of that fact:
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp
 
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