I'm not sure where these history questions come from. The initial sequence for the Arpanet is documented pretty thoroughly. The first four nodes were UCLA(1), SRI(2), UCSB(3) and Utah(4). They were installed approximately one month apart starting Sept 1, 1969. (The exact installation dates may have varied slightly.)
Doug Engelbart ran the lab at SRI. Vint, Jon and I were all at UCLA working in Len Kleinrock's lab. Larry Roberts was the director of the Information Processing Techniques Office at ARPA. He was the sponsor of the network, which means he paid for it and oversaw the contracts. BBN built the IMPs, which was their name for what we would now call routers.
Over the next few years we all moved around. I went to ARPA. Vint went to Stanford University. Jon went to work at MITRE in the Washington DC area and then moved back to California to work for Engelbart at SRI. I finished at ARPA -- by then renamed to DARPA -- and went to USC-ISI. Jon left SRI and came down to USC-ISI in a different group and stayed there until he passed away. Vint left Stanford and came to DARPA. Etc.
Dear Steven
I understand "[Doug] also saw NLS as a natural to support an online directory of resources, so he proposed a Network Information Center (NIC), which he built up and directed until around 1977, when it spun off as an independent operation." http://www.thocp.net/biographies/engelbart_douglas.html . I am interested in the evolution of the thinking and experience IRT network intergovernance, functions and architecture. History is the only source we have to understand the possible alternatives, why a solution works, etc. For example, I am interested in the funding motivations. You described yours as the dream "of very high quality intercomputer connections and very rich protocols to knit the computers together", while Doug's NIC ad-hoc role decribed in RFC 082 is of great interest, as are its various possible architectures. Also the difference with the other international public deployments, which were usage or operators oriented. Considering and building on all these experiences together, and their implications, could probably address some of the concerns of Phillip.
jfc
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