UCLA

Parte del primer diálogo entre investigadores de UCLA y SRI (Stanford Research Institute):

"Did you get the L?" "Yes, I got the L"
"Did you get the O?" "Yes, I got the O."
"Did you get the G?" Crash!
. . .
This is not "What hath God wrought?" This is login.

1999 is the 30th anniversary of a number of historical events of worldwide importance. The two most important technologically are the Lunar landing and the beginnings of the Internet.

SESCAL 99 chose to note the latter event for three reasons:

The lunar landing was a tremendous achievement, accomplished through the teamwork of tens of thousands of people. But the start of what has become the Internet was accomplished by a few hundred people - if that many - and it has affected millions more people worldwide, particularly in the past five years.

The beginnings of the Internet occurred within sight of SESCAL - at UCLA; and,

This event has been overlooked by many -- including some Washington politicians. The precursor to the Internet -- ARPANET -- was born right here in Los Angeles, not in Foggy Bottom.

See the souvenir cover (envelope) with the US Postal Service cancel and map showing the initial ARPANET nodes that was available at the show.

The story is long and technical and best told via accounts accessible on the Internet. (See the next page.) The person who can rightly be called the Father of the Internet is UCLA's Dr. Leonard Kleinrock. It was his ground-breaking development of packet-switching theory as a means of exchanging data via a network that has led to the fulfilment of an earlier concept of “a galactic network.”

The Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency saw a need to be able to share data between their research centers, and since Kleinrock was the leader in such studies, and since he was at UCLA, the project was brought to UCLA. By the summer of 1969, a team of 40 researchers had been assembled at his Network Measurement Center at UCLA's Computer Science Department. To accomplish what was needed, a military-hardened Honeywell DDP 516 mini-computer was modified, and special software written, by Bolt, Beranek and Newman in Cambridge, Mass. to meet Kleinrock's specifications. IMP, the Interface Message Processor, was created.

The first one was delivered to UCLA, the first node of what would be ARPANET, on Labor Day weekend 1969, two weeks earlier than anticipated! On Tuesday, September 2nd, the first host computer, a Scientific Data Systems Sigma 7, was connected to the IMP, and the first part of the network was born. These devices were bigger than a large telephone booth -- there was no such thing as a "little IMP."

In mid-October, the second IMP was delivered to the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in Menlo Park. Their IMP was connected to a different SDS computer, an SDS 940. Each machine was an individual and they could not "talk" to each other. One used ASCII, the other EBCDIC -- two completely different character sets. So now the first two nodes were ready. Could they talk to each other through the IMPs?

On the evening of October 29th, the first attempt was made to connect from UCLA to SRI, 350 miles to the north. The machines were on, the digital circuit connecting the IMPs was ready, each end confirmed all was “go” via a phone connection. So it began.

The idea was to first get the computers connected to each other via the IMPs, then do a little data transfer. To do the first part, the UCLA site was to login to the SRI site. With Kleinrock watching over his shoulder, Charley Kline typed an L. SRI confirmed receipt of the L. He typed an O. SRI confirmed receipt of the O. He typed a G. SRI confirmed a system crash! But all was not lost. In a few hours the problem was fixed, LOGIN was received, a good connection was established, and the initial transmission experiments were carried out.

By the end of 1969, nodes had been added at the University of California Santa Barbara and at the University of Utah. A year later there were ten nodes spanning the country.

12 de enero de 2003