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Celebrating The Origins of Packet Switching
XaN-ASMoDi writes with an interesting historical piece at the BBC on the early history of packet switching, excerpting: "It has often been said that change is the only constant in the 21st Century. And there is little doubt that the restless tone of these times is something that the web has helped to accelerate, but the only reason that [...] the web can cope with that punishing pace is thanks to work done four decades ago by British mathematician Donald Davies at the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL).
On 5 August 1968 Dr Davies gave the first public presentation of work he had been doing on a method of moving data around computer networks called 'packet switching.'"
It's an oddly-specific use of the phrase: does that imply that change has not been constant in other times?
Re-read it. It says that the only thing that doesn't change in the 21st century is that things change. Arguably, things always change, in which case the phrase is vapid. At the same time, the rate at which things change is accelerating. Compare life in Europe, circa 1000 with 1100. Then compare life in Europe 1900 and 2000 - the differences are much greater!
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
A lot of people made contributions around that time. As a then undergraduate flunky in a physics lab, I remember playing with an early network that linked the Illiac II with a bunch of other computers. Since we weren't supposed to be playing with it, all we could do was come up with the login prompts, but several Midwestern universities were linked already. ARPANET sputtered to life in 1969, too soon for the touted theoretical contributions to be seminal. I don't doubt Davies did important work, but the article is over hyped.
Interesting that this event just came up. I just finished reading Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet today. For those interested in the history of ARPA and internetworking development (and the people behind these developments - Davies, Kleinrock, Licklider, et. al.), I highly recommend this book.
"The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as long as we live." - M.J. A
If you want to talk about easy digital, packet based networking, then the telegraph is worth a mention. Messages for electronic telegraphs were sent as packets that are later relayed to its final destination. It was also digital in the sense that each character was transmitted as discrete values. Another predecessor to TCP/IP based networking would be the mail system. While it wasn't digital, it was also packet based and as anyone who've used the postal system knows, it's only best effort. For added cost, you can get ack-like behavior with return receipt.
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