Jan 21, 2007

Computing pioneer speaks about field's beginnings

By Janet Duca Norton / Society Columnist

The Computer History Museum hosted its monthly speakers series featuring leading innovators and pioneers in the field of computing on Jan. 9. About 150 museum members and guests attended the insightful conversation with 2006 Computer History Museum Fellow Robert Kahn, conducted by museum trustee and Stanford faculty member Ed Feigenbaum.

Attendee Esther Dyson of EDventure, an emerging information technology company, in her Web piece wrote:

Both are justly revered "fathers" in information technology - Kahn as the man who designed and built ARPANET, the Net's precursor, and Ed Feigenbaum as a leader in the field of expert systems.

Feigenbaum, following a film-maker's advice for producing an interesting film, structured his conversation, remarks and questions around the theme of "the quest."

Kahn's interest in the early years was networking, and it was a lengthy development. In the mid-60s, Kahn took a leave of absence from the faculty of MIT to join the research firm Bolt, Beranek and Newman, where he designed the Arpanet, the first "wide area packet-switched network," and participated in the team that built the first interface message processor (a small computer), which served as the Arpanet packet switch and standardized the network interface to all attached host computers.

The intent was always to create social networks, Kahn said. In 1972 he organized a demonstration of the Arpanet at the International Computer Communication Conference in Washington, D.C and joined the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency and initiated the "Internetting project," which developed an open architecture for networking.

In 1974 he and 2000 Museum Fellow Vinton Cerf developed the TCP/IP protocols, a set of communication standards that enabled different computer networks to share information, giving the Internet its power and reach.

Feigenbaum called the process a "30-year instant moment."

Kahn said, "I never wanted to give it up. I had too much fun. It was like being in a 40-year rapids."

Networks are only in developed countries, and Kahn thinks we're just at the beginning, saying, "Think big, beyond what has been done. If you have an instinct to make a difference, go with it."

Some of the techies listening attentively were museum executive director John Toole and his wife Betsy, Karen Tucker, Larry Tessler of Yahoo, Homer and Nancy Jamison, Alden Heintz and 2005 Museum Fellow Don Knuth.