Wirt - I think the Internet goes back even farther than that. An article in
American Heritage some time ago said the seeds started in 1955 as a DoD
project to create a communications network impervious to nuclear attack. It
was later that academia got into it if I'm not mistaken.

On a somewhat related note my car club had a small meet in Santa Fe, New
Mexico. I had to drive up to see Los Alamos and its origins were somewhat
related, only because of difficulty in communications.

Seems about 10-15 universities were involved in the Manhattan Project and
because of the secrecy it was difficult for scientists from one university
to communicate with counterparts in another university (do you have
clearance? Can I talk to this guy about this problem?)

Anyway I think it was Oppenheimer's  suggestion to Gen. Groves to have a
central location where all these people could be together and in a
controlled environment. It had to be away from the coast(s) because of the
shelling/bombing threat. Oppenheimer used to go camping in Los Alamos - and
he took over an exclusive Boy's school that had been there for years.

one more trivia note - since I am famous on other lists for going off on
tangents - the only communication with anyone at Los Alamos was "P.O. Box
2663 - Santa Fe NM"...

Bill
-----Original Message-----
From: Wirt Atmar <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thursday, September 02, 1999 13:51
Subject: More trivia yet


>Because no one else has mentioned it, I might as well. Today is the 30th
>birthday of the internet. It was exactly today, thirty years ago, in 1969,
>that the very first communications between two computers and two
router-like
>devices occurred, UCLA to Berkely, if I remember correctly.
>
>I unfortunately don't remember the first conversation (it was something
like:
>"Are you there?"). Regardless of my failing memory, the network connection
>only stayed up through the first few words and then promptly crashed.
>
>No one working on the internet (then called ARPANET) had the slightest idea
>of what they were doing then would turn out to be what the internet is now.
>Indeed, the ARPANET project had to be forced on the unwilling participants.
>ARPA had described the project to the various universities and military
>facilities that were to be connected as a way of sharing their computers
with
>one another. The general reaction was, "Hell, no, I don't want anybody else
>on my computer. I've got my own fish to fry -- and I don't have enough
>resources as it is."
>
>Even after the network was first primitively established, it essentially
went
>unused for the first several years. Programs written in one place wouldn't
>run on someone else's computer -- and even those that did, were slower than
>molasses.
>
>But all of that changed with the invention of e-mail and the "@" symbol, an
>aspect of ARPANET that was initially completely unimagined by the original
>planners. All of a sudden, the network had human value. It wasn't machines
>talking to machines that caused the network to be used, as originally
>envisioned. It was people talking to other people that generated the first
>mini-explosion of use of the ARPANET (which later became NSFNET, which
later
>became the internet).
>
>You never can tell what will become of small, simple ideas. Sometimes they
>even greatly surprise the people who thought them up and implemented them.
>
>Wirt Atmar
>