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Donald Davies: End Transmission
RalfM writes: "D. W. Davies,landmark scientist, has passed away. He coined
the term 'packet switching' and did lots of research on
the whole gamut of networking and data transmission.
Read about it
here." Not many people can claim "I conceived the use of a purpose-designed network employing packet switching in which the stream of bits is broken up into short messages, or 'packets', that find their way individually to the destination, where they are reassembled into the original stream."
>And i can't even name it's inventor off the top of my head
That's because two teams were working on it simultaneously, a large-scale one from RCA, who were trying to get the same rights for television that they had with radios -- per-unit royalties (the MPAA and RIAA didn't invent this kind of content distribution licensing concept, they're just standing on the shoulders of giants), and a smaller private team lead by Philo Farnsworth.
It's a long, sordid story, but in the long run, Farnsworth won the 'TV arms race,' but because of nasty patent disputes and the like, RCA won the mindshare race and Farnsworth went broke. Some number of years later, the patent dispute was settled in his favor, and RCA began to have to reimburse Farnsworth, but he'd already dropped out of inventing, and died bitter and angry.
FYI.
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You didn't get the contract because he thought you were lying, you didn't get it because your reply was less than respectful.
I run into that all the time. When I say that I've been on the internet since 1988, most people are amazed! Then all I have to do is explain that I was in college at that time, and the internet was mostly an academic domain at that time. It makes sense, and it's respectful.
If you're a consultant, you should view yourself as a fancy teacher. There are no dumb questions.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
It's sad to lose somebody like him. He co-authored the first good books on data communication networks.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
You make it sound like we'd be in the information dark ages if it weren't for this single fellow. You don't honestly believe that, do you?
I'm not taking away any of the guy's contributions, but your rant accomplishes the very thing you're complaining about.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
There are no dumb questions.
I usually hear it "There are no stupid questions."
My standard response: "But there are stupid people."
My longer response, produced only when people argue:
It was two minutes before the tenth-grade Algebra I class would end. I was talking to some of the students about orbits and gravity; I'd sketched a circle and a space ship to demonstrate. A (blond female) student asked "But how do they get back in?"
"What do you mean?"
She walked up to my drawing. "If this is the earth, and this," she drew a dot inside the circle, "is Cape Canaveral, how do they get in there?"
"I'm sorry, I still don't understand."
"How can they get in? See, they're up here," she pointed to the space ship, "and they want to get here," she drew a line from the space ship to Cape Canaveral, "how do they get in without hitting the edge?" She pointed to where her line intersected the circle. "Won't they hit the earth right here?"
Fortunately, the bell rang, because I had no answer. She didn't comprehend the difference between two dimensions and three. THAT was when I decided that the education professors who said things like "There are no stupid questions" were smoking crack. There is such a thing as an unacceptable level of ignorance, and I think it's morally wrong to misrepresent reality by suggesting otherwise. If I'm ever in a seminar where the instructor says "There are no stupid questions," I do my best to immediately prove them wrong.
Also, if you're a consultant, you generally have a greater freedom to choose your boss. Never pick a stupid boss if you can help it.
There is a book which you can find at ye ol Fatbrain titled Where Wizards Stay Up Late that is an interesting read (if your a true geek) about the whole ARPANET thing. It talks a bit about Davies and the whole idea of breaking data into packets. It turns out that there was a fellow in the US who came up with the idea at about the same time as Davies.
The books a bit dry at times but worth a read if your into that sort of thing
I believe it's a Pratchett novel where the answer is given "anybody can invent *that*" .. "But the thing is, you didn't, did you?"...
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,
Anyway.
A posthoumous thank-you to the chap for kicking the ball off, sort of thing.
~Tim
--
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
He was the first one to come up with Wonkavision, which takes *people* and "splits them up into a million pieces which go whizzing through the air and come down into your TV set where they're put together again in the right order."
:)
Apologies for the joke at someone's expense, but it's been ages since I've been able to use a good Willie Wonka reference.
--
The Happy Blues Man
I accept on blind faith that Cincinatti exists.
OK, this may be flamebait, and I certainly don't want to be disrepectful of a guy who apparently is a major pioneer, in many other respects. ... anyway, thank god packet switching was not patented ...
But I just wonder if packet switching wasn't just an idea whose time had come? It is a fairly natural solution to traffic problems in general.
Certainly more obvious than rendering mouse pointers on bit-mapped graphical terminals using XOR in hardware
According to The Living Internet (which seems to be as good a museum as any of the others mentioned):
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Websters as a reliable authority ?
Swan produced the first vaguely reliable lightbulb, received the first patent, mass-produced the first usable bulbs (in Newcastle, before the Swan Edison company), and is even reported to have independently invented the carburised filament. Starr described (sic) the idea of using a carburised filament, but didn't specify a useful material to use, didn't have a means of sealing the envelope after production and didn't even have an adequate vacuum pump to produce an unsealed demonstrator. Starr's claim is also widely disputed as post-facto filing of someone else's idea. Not to imply that the American Patent Office makes a habit of encouraging such practices, then or now....
Edison supporters still claim that Edison received the first patent in 1879, ignoring Swan's UK patent in 1878 (they can't spell Humphrey Dav(e)y either).
As for the trustworthiness of Edison's patent, then the US PTO themselves ruled it invalid in 1883, in favour of William Sawyer's claims.
If you want more details on Joseph Swan, look in the archives of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle Upon Tyne. This is a private library, and still going (although my own membership has lapsed since I left Newcastle). Apart from demonstrations of Swan's work, it's also where Humphrey Davey first demonstrated the miner's safety lamp.
I'd mention Edison's treatment of Tesla, but I wouldn't want you to think I'm one of those monomaniac loons that hangs around on the Net, slating Edison 8-)
Hang on a mo. From http://www.geocities.com/~anderberg/ ant/history/
1961
July
Leonard Kleinrock publishes the first paper on packet switching networks: 'Information Flow in Large Communication Nets' while at MIT.
Is this a paper based on Donald Davies earlier work, or a paper published almost at the same time and i'm getting confused?
Syllable : It's an Operating System
Not many people can claim "I conceived the use of a purpose-designed network employing packet switching in which the stream of bits is broken up into short messages, or 'packets', that find their way individually to the destination, where they are reassembled into the original stream."
Actually, Nobody can claim that, since I beleive Allan Konrad already holds the patent for that technology.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
http://www.pbs.org/internet/timeline /ant/history
http://www.geocities.com/~anderberg
The Internet is more than just a packet switched network. The idea that made it possible is the catenet (concatenated networks). See IEN 48, The Catenet Model for Internetworking, Vint Cerf, 1978. The catenet model made it possible to build an Internet out of many incompatible and proprietary networks. Like the Borg, the catenet model could assimilate other networks, without discarding their hardware or software.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Per this Obit from The Times of London, Davies worked with Alan Turing after the war to help build first ACE computer. Later in life he was an early advocate of security for networks, which he spent the last 20 years researching.
Davies was also awarded the Royal honor of Commander of the British Empire (CBE), essentially one level short of knighthood, for his contributions to computing science.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
This Internet timeline mentions Davies as early as 1967. So does This one. There are few people who could have claimed to have been around the Internet scene for as long as 37 years. Most people don't even realize that it goes back that far.
Got Rhinos?
The few that I've seen make the mistake of considering the WWW and the Internet to be the same thing, and start things off with Berners-Lee. He's a celebrity, but he was standing on the shoulders of giants.
Got Rhinos?
We know who invented TV, but few people know who invented the electron gun that it relies on
This is another common misconception, that John Loggie Baird (sp?) invented modern television. His invention used a mechanical scanning disk, not an electron gun. The electron gun TV was a seperate invention (And i can't even name it's inventor off the top of my head). Baird still gets the credit for inventing TV, however.
I'll stop being pedantic now...;)
Syllable : It's an Operating System
I don't think anyone can even remember the name of the person who invented paper and the first ink-based writing device. Unfortunately, that's how history works.
But it is sad how in today's era of mass commercialism and consumerism, that any advances, especially technological ones, are eventually and pitifully reduced to a tacky marketable product all for the sake of a quick profit. This all but takes away the end-user's appreciation of the history, effort and time put into making the scientific and technological breakthroughs that were needed to overcome what seemed to be previously impassable barriers and limits.
Those of us reading this article can only wonder how many failures and heartbreaks, and moments of near surrender pioneers have to endure just to make a breakthrough which will benefit humanity as a whole only to see it result in a tacky mass produced product that hardly anyone will remember you for. Mainstream society now consists of techno-peasants who only think about the enjoyment they are getting out of using whatever technology before them without bothering or wanting to appreciate how much blood, sweat and tears have gone into them; let alone how they truly work beneath a shiny colourful marketable veneer. All they really think about eagerly is how long before they can purchase the next feature-packed bloated version of their product and chuck out the old without though.
IMHO: Perhaps Slashdot should take up the initiative and begin an Computing Hall of Fame, so that the pioneers of the ever so rapidly changing computer age, both past and present, be remembered in our lifetimes for helping bringing the world much, much closer together by those who truly appreciate them.
D. W. Davies - I salute you. Thank you very, very much for all you've done for us all.
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
ACK
Eh...
That's not _quite_ fair is it!
Yes, we all know who invented the lightbulb, because a lightbulb is a very useful thing.
We don't know who invented the technique to manufacture argon, or to create tungsten filament wire, or who figured out how to make a glass bulb that wouldn't shatter. All these were doubtless very important steps forward, but not in themselves useful.
Was inventing packet-switching all that important? More important than inventing the blast furnace? More important than inventing fractional distillation?
We know who invented TV, but few people know who invented the electron gun that it relies on, and few still the people who discovered the physical principles that the electron gun is based around.
Fame has never been that strongly linked to importance...
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I give my condolences to the family, the friends, and the untold and uncountable engineers who Mr. Davies' work has influenced. I can only say that if it is the humble goal of all engineers to truly expand the knowledge and define the methods by which humanity seeks to function, then Mr. Davies truly succeeded to a degree that all of us can only aspire to reach.
I didn't know him, but his work has directly influenced my life and my studies. (One of his more intriguing discoveries is referenced in my Signature!) To those who complain that others may have received more fame than he, I can only say that genuine impact is of greater value than any shallow fame, and that Mr. Davies truly contributed genuinely to the lives of myself, my coworkers, and each of you who may read this message.
God speed, Donald Davies. You did well for yourself. Engineers throughout the world salute you, and your contributions.
Goodbye.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
But, why would anyone want to say "I conceived the use of a purpose-designed network employing packet switching in which the stream of bits is broken up into short messages, or 'packets', that find their way individually to the destination, where they are reassembled into the original stream," when one could put it as simply and eloquently as Al Gore when he said "I invented the Internet"? :-)
But seriously, it's sad whenever we lose one of the pioneers. Not too many people these days really know or understand that the Internet didn't just "materialize" in the mid-nineties, and so the pioneering work done by so many universities and by so many involved with Arpanet and Usenet gets ignored in the popular consciousness. If you tell the average Internet user that the roots of the Internet really go back at least to the sixties with the work that was being done at universities and in the government, they'll stare at you in disbelief. Or apathy...
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
I'll bet 95% of the people who read this will know exactly who the first 3 are, but until this article, didn't even know that the fourth person existed.
Such a sad, over sensationalized world we live in!
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If God Droppd Acid, Would he see People???
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
D.W. Davies left a strong trace inside the core of our internet world, his name can even be found in RFCs.
First, his contribution to the creation of the Internet :
RFC243 and RFC290 (bibliography) :
D. W. Davies, "Communication Networks to Serve Rapid-response
Computers," Proc IFIP Congress 68, p. 650-656, August 1968.
D. W. Davies, "The Principles of a Data Communication Network for
Computers and Remote Peripherals," Proc IFIP Congress 68, p. 709-714,
August 1968.
RFC2235 (Internet Timeline) :
1967
ACM Symposium on Operating Principles
- Plan presented for a packet-switching network
- First design paper on ARPANET published by Lawrence G. Roberts
National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Middlesex, England develops
NPL Data Network under D. W. Davies
Second, contributions concerning security :
RFC1750 (randomness generation) :
[...] It has been shown by Donald W. Davies that this sort of shifted partial output feedback significantly weakens an algorithm compared will feeding all of the output bits back as input. In particular, for DES, repeated encrypting a full 64 bit quantity will give an expected repeat in about 2^63 iterations. Feeding back anything less than 64 (and more than 0) bits will give an expected repeat in between 2**31 and 2**32 iterations!
[...]
RFC2025 (public key mechanism, bibliography) :
[Davi89]: D. W. Davies and W. L. Price, "Security for Computer
Networks", Second Edition, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1989.
-- javaDragon is an instance of JavaDragon.