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A little more than twenty-five years ago,
computer networks did not exist anywhere -- except in the
minds of a handful of computer scientists. In the late 1960s,
the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency
funded a project to create computer communication among
its university-based researchers. The experiment was inspired
by J. C. R. Licklider, a brilliant scientist from MIT. At
a time when computers were generally regarded as nothing
more than giant calculators, Licklider saw their potential
as communications devices.
Where Wizards Stay Up Late is the
story of the small group of researchers and engineers whose
invention, daring in its day, became the foundation for
the Internet. With ARPA's backing, Licklider and others
began the quest for a way to connect computers across the
country.
In 1969, ARPA awarded the contract to build
the most integral piece of this network -- a computerized
switch called the Interface Message Processor, or IMP --
to Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), a small Cambridge, Massachusetts,
company. A half-dozen engineers at BBN, who called themselves
the IMP Guys, knew it was possible to do what larger companies
-- including AT&T and IBM -- had dismissed as impossible.
But making computer networking possible required inventing
new technologies. Working around the clock, the IMP Guys
met a tight deadline, and the first IMP was installed at
UCLA nine months after the contract award.
A nationwide network called the ARPANET
grew from four initial sites. Protocols were developed,
and along the way a series of accidental discoveries were
made, not the least of which was e-mail. Almost immediately,
e-mail became the most popular feature of the Net and the
"@" sign became lodged in the iconography of our
times. The ARPANET continued to grow, then merged with other
computer networks to become today's Internet. In 1990, the
ARPANET itself was shut down, fully merged by then with
the Internet it had spawned.
Where Wizards Stay Up Late tells
the fascinating story of a group of young computer whizzes
with a common vision who succeeded where others had refused
even to venture. In the process, they invented the most
important communications medium since the telephone.
Katie Hafner is a contributing editor
at Newsweek, covering technology, and is the coauthor of
Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier.
Matthew Lyon is Assistant to the President of the University
of Texas at Austin and a former associate editor of The
Texas Observer. They are married and live in Austin, Texas.
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