History of the Internet, 1965-1995

Series Introduction

Mon, 08 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Series Introduction by Karl Auerbach

Today, in 2022, the Internet is everywhere.

Thirty years ago there was no World Wide Web.

Sixty years ago there was no Internet.

This series looks at the first half of those sixty years, 1965 through 1995.

Those decades saw the opening of telephone circuits to public uses; the rise of packet switching; the creation of TCP and IP; the invention of Ethernet; the convergence of academic and research networks; the deployment of network exchange points; and the maturation of routing and naming protocols.

Home Page

Thu, 01 Sep 2016 23:00:00 -0800

What is the History of the Internet (1965-1995) Project?

Much is being said and written about the source of one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century: the internet.

However, most of that material is from secondary or tertiary sources. And that material is often more about technology than about the people, motivations, disputes and controversies, or roads not taken.

This project is different.

Here we are attempting to gather primary sources, usually video interviews with people who actually helped to create the internet.

About Chris Wellens

Thu, 01 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Chris Wellens

Chris Wellens is the President and CEO at InterWorking Labs (http://iwl.com/) in Scotts Valley, California.

Chris founded InterWorking Labs in 1993 as a spinoff from the Interop Company, where she was the Director of Technology Marketing. In this capacity she provided leadership for the 5,000 node “InteropNet” as well as technology showcases. Prior to Interop

About InterWorking Labs

Thu, 01 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

InterWorking Labs

InterWorking Labs, Inc.

About Karl Auerbach

Thu, 01 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Karl Auerbach

Mr. Auerbach is the Chief Technology Officer at InterWorking Labs (http://iwl.com/) in Scotts Valley, California.

Karl has been developing Internet technology since the early 1970’s when he worked at System Development Corporation (SDC). He is also deeply engaged the issues of law, technology, and internet governance.

Karl is a “Pioneer Member” of the Internet Society.

Phil Karn on the reboot of the 1978 International Sun/Earth Explorer-3 (ISEE-3)/ (International Cometary Explorer)

Sun, 20 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Commentary by Karl Auerbach

This is an outtake from on our interview with Phil Karn.

The attempt to re-acquire the ISEE-3 satellite is both timely and representative of the “let’s try it” spirit that energized the creation of much of what became the internet.

Severe Tire Damage, The Internet's First Live Band

Sun, 20 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Commentary by Karl Auerbach

From the perspective of 2014 it is hard to imagine that there was a day when the internet carried no music, no video.

Yet there was such a time. And someone, or some group, had to be the first.

Status - July 2014

Sun, 20 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

We are still collecting interviews.

We recently made a trip to San Diego where we did two interviews.

One of the interviews (Phil Karn) contained material relating to a very current event - the effort to reboot the ISEE-3 satellite. So we pulled that part of the interview into a quick video about Phil’s role in the reboot effort.

We plan to schedule some interviews in the San Francisco Bay area over the rest of the summer.

Our New Blog

Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The History of the Internet project is anticipated to take several years. We expect to be spending some years gathering interviews before we move onto coalescing the material into video episodes. Here we will try to let you know how our efforts are progressing.

Series Trailer

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000

All video seriels need a trailer, right? Here’s the one we published in November 2012..

Commentary by Karl Auerbach

This video begins with the famous “Daisy” advertisement used by Johnson against Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. That ad reflected the end-of-the-world feeling of the cold war era. It was from that feeling that the internet was born: that our military needed a network that could survive and operate during a nuclear war.

There seems to be a movement today that tries to deny that genesis of the internet. Yet I have first hand experience of the truth of that point of view - during the early 1970’s I worked (at System Development Corporation, SDC) on networks for the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and other parts of the US Department of Defense. We worked with the express goal of making a network that could survive the vaporization of elements of that network in nuclear blasts.

There were, of course, other motivating factors - not the least of which was that packet switching seemed to be an interesting technology. But the money for development came from the US military establishment.

The video then moves into a sequence of science fiction images. Besides being fun this is intended to be an ironic comment on a paternalistic notion that has become part of internet institutions - that technology and technologists are above politics and are thus the best governors of modern society. This was the message of films such as Things To Come.

Then there is a progression of computing machines - from mechanical calculators up through the giant Q7 SAGE computers.

It was the desire to share the largest of those SAGE computers, the Q32 (which lived at System Development Corporation, but before my time there), that created one of the motivations to create the ARPAnet.

The video then goes through the growth of the internet, from the seed of the ARPAnet at UCLA up through the current day.