Leonard Cranrock, the father of the Internet, told us in detail the entire story of the birth of the Internet half a century ago. I really didn’t expect that at the age of 83, he was in such good health, still working 10 hours a day, and had no intention of retiring.
Before I knew it, 3 hours had passed and it was already 1:30 pm. We were also worried that it would affect his lunch time, but fortunately, we were relieved when he said he would not eat lunch. We will have more cooperation in the future. It is really rich and exciting content and has given us too much inspiration. Finally, we asked, is there anything you regret most in your life? He said it was getting married too early. I had a son when I was in graduate school.
The birthplace of the Internet: If there are several people who are the fathers of the Internet, and they are somewhat controversial, then there is no doubt that the birthplace of the Internet is room 3420 at the University of California, Los Angeles. Leonard Kleinrock gave us a detailed recollection. Here he made the first router, the first node of the Internet, the first successful connection to the Internet, and the first message "LO" sent out. .
October 29, 1969 at 10:30 pm was a historic moment when the Internet was born. There is a birth certificate issued by IEEE on the wall. There are also machines from that year, even the colors and lights of the walls are what they were back then, and of course the most important thing is Cranrock himself, who has become a part of this historical memorial. There was no audio or video of what happened that night, only the simplest work log, which became the only historical record left.
There is also the earliest IMP. Every time someone comes to visit, Cranrock has to slap it hard several times to prove its sturdiness (I suspect that Cranrock can eventually become iron sand. Palm). The room is simple, but as Cranrock said, you have to feel like a pilgrim when you come here.
Leonard opened the door to the Internet
Leonard Kleinrock, born on June 13, 1934, American engineer and computer scientist, California Professor of Computer Science at the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Los Angeles, he is known as the "Father of the Data Network" and is also recognized as one of the "Fathers of the Internet". He received the Draper Award from the American Academy of Engineering in 2001.
Cranrock has made many important contributions in the field of computer networks. It was he who created the first information transmission through computer networks in human history, opening the door to the Internet to the world. Cranrock's most famous and outstanding work is the queue theory of his early work. Queue theory has been applied in many fields. Packet switching, as an important mathematical background, became one of the most basic concepts in the subsequent Internet.
As a boy, Cranrock used waste materials to make a battery-free mineral radio. At the age of 24, he received a full scholarship with excellent results and entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to pursue a PhD. Perhaps out of curiosity, or with a spirit of exploration into unknown areas, in 1959, when many MIT students chose the popular information theory for their doctoral thesis, Leonard Crane Rock chose a brand-new research field for himself. Domain - Data Networking.
In 1962, Cranrock completed his doctoral thesis "Information Flow in Large Communication Networks". In 1964, "Communication Networks" was published, proposing the concept of "packet switching" for the first time, laying the most important technical theoretical foundation for the Internet. It was this great decision that led Leonard Cranrock to create the mathematical theory of packet switching networks, which also became the technical foundation for the Internet.
After graduation, Cranrock entered the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and served as a professor of computer science. Later, Cranrock led and presided over the experiment of the first packet-switched communication network in human society. , thus opening the door to the Internet era. Cranrock covers a wide range of fields: packet switching networks, packet wireless networks, local area networks, broadband networks, gigabit networks, nomadic computing, intelligent software agents and peer-to-peer networks, etc. He has authored 6 books and published more than 250 papers. , and applied for 18 technical patents.
Cranrock has won numerous awards throughout his life, including more than 30 of the more famous awards.
In 2001, due to his important contributions to the field of computer networks, especially the theoretical field of computer networks, Cranrock won the Draper Award of the American Academy of Engineering together with three other scientists, and was named *** "Father of the Internet".
In the mid-1960s, packet networking was in a state of neglect for a period of time until the start of the ARPA project. Since ARPA requires a large number of scientists distributed in various places, but cannot provide computers for every scientist, ARPA proposed to develop a data network, ARPAnet, to enable a small number of computers to be interconnected and achieve maximum shared use.
In 1966, Robert Taylor (head of the ARPA network) took the first step to realize the idea of ??the Internet. He first thought of Lawrence Roberts (the proposer of the "Larry Route"). In order to find the "Larry Route" to connect computers, Robert Taylor invited the elites of an era to co-found ARPANET (the predecessor of the Internet).
Paul Baran proposed the theory of "distributed communication systems"; Bob Kang and Vinton Cerf drafted the TCP/IP protocol, the most extensive document in human history; and Renner What de Cranrock brought was the information block, which was the packet switching technology in the future. UCLA, where Cranrock is located, serves as the first node of ARPAnet. The ARPAnet Measurement Center under his leadership is responsible for the operation and maintenance of ARPAnet.
If the network is a fishing net with countless nodes, on this fishing net, information is no longer transmitted point-to-point as a whole, but information of any size is divided into lightweight fragments. , allowing them to freely choose the fastest path in the network channel, and automatically combine and converge after reaching the destination to restore complete information.
At 22:30 on October 29, 1969, smart and hard-working scientists finally ushered in a historical moment. Cranrock delivered a five-year plan to Stanford Research Institute researcher Bill Dewar in Los Angeles. The three-letter word LOGIN means "log in". When entering the letter G, the instrument showed that the transmission system suddenly collapsed and communication could not continue. "LO" became the world's first Internet transmission message.
"The first message that appeared on the ARPA network was LO", Leonard Cranrock explained humorously: "Yo, look!", his loving smile was like a father talking about his own Child: "This is really destined to happen. We didn't design this message in advance, but what it presented was so prophetic, powerful and concise. It was purely luck. I think we probably spread the word for the beginning of the Internet." The best news!"
"Great historical moments are often surprisingly simple." This is the evaluation of this event by later generations.
The story of routers, from cutting-edge national defense technology to entering the homes of ordinary people
When it comes to routers, it is inseparable from INTERNET, but before talking about INTERNET, we must first talk about an organization - — Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, referred to as DARPA, which is the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Bridging the gap, Powered by ideas.
This passage to encourage scientists at that time was really full of idealism and vitality.
As we all know, today's INTERNET was first researched by the U.S. military, and the purpose was naturally for military use. At that time, the international social situation was very serious, and the Cold War had already begun. In order to counter the threat of the Soviet Union There is naturally a huge demand for technological equipment that can more effectively communicate information and collect data. At that time, the Soviet Union had already built artificial satellites. In order to regain its leading position in the field of science and technology, the United States established ARPA in 1958.
ARPA changed its name to DARPA after a period of time, and then changed it back to ARPA. The last name change was on March 11, 1996, and the name changed back to DARPA, which continues to this day, although it is not clear There are reasons for this, but it does not prevent it from being a great project with far-reaching impact.
Some people say that DARPA is the most money-burning organization in the world. This is indeed a fact. Of course, while they have spent a lot of money, they have also created many miracles and many research results that have had a profound impact on the world.
What other research has DARPA done in the computer field? There is this description on Wikipedia:
DARPA has been responsible for funding the development of many technologies which have had a major impact on the world, including computer? networking.
as ?well as NLS, which was both the first hypertext system, and an important precursor to the contemporary ubiquitous graphical user interface.
The prototype of today's INTERNET is the original ARPANET. It is easy to tell from the name that it is ( D) Created by ARPA. ARPANET was the world's first network to use packet switching technology. Packet switching was a new and very important concept in the communications field at that time.
The impact of this technology on the future is quite profound, and packet switching still occupies an absolute dominant position in the communications field today.
With the need to build a network, scientists, and the concept of Packet switching, the most important thing is to have enough money... After these conditions are met, the next one will appear. It is a network connected by nodes (NODE) ??- ARPANET. IMP (Interface Message Processor) is each node (NODE), and it is also generally considered to be the first generation router (ROUTER).
When talking about ARPANET, we have to talk about Cranrock. Cranrock made a very important contribution to the development of ARPANET when he was working at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He once described the work he did: "Basically, what I did in 1961-1962 was to establish a set of mathematical theories about packet networks..."
The original ARPANET only Four nodes, it was December 5, 1969, the network was established between four IMPs located at different universities or research institutions. Earlier - at 22:30 on October 29, Charley Kline and Leonard Kleinrock sent the first message from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) via ARPANET. The content of the message was very simple, that is An English word "login."
However, problems already occurred when transmitting the message for the first time. Both "l" and "o" were successfully transmitted, but the system suddenly crashed when transmitting "g". As a result, the world's first The message transmitted through ARPANET became "lo". Of course, the problem was fixed later and "login" was successfully transmitted.
The concept of router (ROUTER) was first proposed by the International Federation for Information Processing. At that time, the router was also called a gateway. It was not until the mid-to-late 1980s that dedicated routers began to be studied. In 1984, a famous network equipment company was established, that is Cisco.
In 1984, Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lemer, a couple of computer teachers at Stanford University, invented the router in order to solve the problem of communication between computers, and then founded the famous Cisco company. Cisco started out as a router and grew rapidly with the development of the network in the 1990s. However, these two professors were not good at running a business, so they sold Cisco for US$200 million in 1990 and went to work they were better at. Of course, these are all things for later.
The Internet has emerged from the Stone Age
At a commemorative conference held on September 7, 1999 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the birth of the Internet, the participating scientists and entrepreneurs said that this belt The huge computer network that has brought incredible wealth and changed the way of global communication is a miracle in human history.
Cranrock, who was still a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said at the conference: "We are stepping out of the Stone Age of the Internet." It was on September 2, 1969, that Cranrock and his The research team he led successfully connected a computer and a switching device the size of a refrigerator, and in the next month the two computers communicated through the switching device, thus paving the way for the rapid development of the Internet in the future. Necessary conditions are provided.
Thirty years after the successful experiment, the Internet has become almost ubiquitous. It not only changes the way people communicate, shop and invest, it also causes a profound reconstruction of business operating models. Later entrepreneurs regarded what Cranrock did in 1969 as the beginning of all the above-mentioned great changes.
George Vradenburg, senior vice president of global and strategic policy at AOL, said that consumers will soon be able to see that the Internet spans personal computers and is connected to many application devices with so-called built-in functions. In addition, the rapid rise of the Internet also means that even large enterprises have to worry about new companies using new technologies.
Compilation from "Technology China - Pioneers of the Internet"
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