[TUHS] In Memoriam: Edsger Dijkstra, and happy birthday Jon Postel!

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Dave Horsfall

    > However, we gained Jon Postel in 1943; with umpteen RFCs to his name, he
    > could pretty much be described as the Father of the Internet.

The problem with using the number of documents as a gauge for that is that Jon
often acted as scribe, so that for many things published under his name, he
was acting more as editor.

As to who (if anyone) does deserve that title, I'm also not sure about the
importance of Cerf and Kahn. NOTE: I am not saying they _didn't_ make the key
contribution - I just haven't looked into it in enough detail to say.

For example, before the TCP/IP effort got rolling, there was something called
the International Packet Network Working Group (INWG) which had a big role,
but which has been poorly documented. There's a note called "The Internet: On
its International Origins and Collaborative Vision" by Rhonda Hauben,
available here:

  http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/misc/haubenpap.rtf

which covers it some, and there's a more recent thing by Alex Mackenzie which
is probably better, but I'm too lazy to go find it.

Louis Pouzin (or whoever it was at CYCLADES who actually had the idea to move
the reliability out of the packet switches, and into the hosts), also would
have a good claim to the title.


Anyway, sorry for the offtopic, but my 'fake history' alarm went off...

	Noel