Internet 1972

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• Ray Tomlinson (BBN) modifies email program for ARPANET where it becomes a quick hit. The @ sign was chosen from the punctuation keys on Tomlinson's Model 33 Teletype for its "at" meaning (March)
  

  

  Robert Kahn - For more info see bottom of page.
• Larry Roberts writes first email management program (RD) to list, selectively read, file, forward, and respond to messages (July)
• International Conference on Computer Communications (ICCC) at the Washington D.C. Hilton with demonstration of ARPANET between 40 machines and the Terminal Interface Processor (TIP) organized by Bob Kahn. (October)
• First computer-to-computer chat takes place at UCLA, and is repeated during ICCC, as psychotic PARRY (at Stanford) discusses its problems with the Doctor (at BBN)
• The first version of the VM (virtual machine)/CMS) which refers to a family of IBM virtual machine operating systems used on IBM mainframes System/370, System/390, zSeries, System z and compatible systems, including the Hercules emulator for personal computers, released in 1972, was the VM/370, or officially Virtual Machine Facility/370. This was a System/370 reimplementation of earlier CP/CMS operating system. Milestone versions included VM/SP. The current version is z/VM, and is still widely used as one of the main full virtualization solutions for the mainframe market.
• International Network Working Group (INWG) formed in October as a result of a meeting at ICCC identifying the need for a combined effort in advancing networking technologies. Vint Cerf appointed first Chair. By 1974, INWG became IFIP WG 6.1
• The SmallTalk programming language and environment is designed at Xerox PARC.
• Gary Kildall implements PL/I on the Intel 4004 processor.
• Hewlett-Packard introduces the world's first handheld scientific calculator, the HP 35. Hewlett-Packard also branches into business computing with the HP 3000 minicomputer, which introduces the era of distributed data processing.
• Canada launches world's first geostationary (domestic) satellite, ANIK I.
• First TV program ever captioned with teletext: Julia Child's "The French Chef."
• 5.25 inch diskettes / floppy disks first appear.
• Steve Wozniak, later cofounder of Apple, this year builds a "blue box" tone generator that cancels the toll ticketing in AT&T's long distance network.
  

  

  Dennis Ritchie (standing) and Ken Thompson at a PDP-11 in 1972. (Photo: Courtesy of Bell Labs)
• Bill Gates and Paul Allen form the Traf-O-Data company. They had developed an 8008-based computer hardware/software system for recording automobile traffic flow on a highway.
• Ray Tomlinson of BBN writes an e-mail program for the ARPAnet and introduces the notation "user@host".
• ITT's first installation of a stored program computer controlled automatic telephone exchange, the Metaconta system.
• Ericsson (or Siemens-Halske?) introduces a carrier frequency system using coaxial cables, transfering 10,800 channels (cf 1950, 1959). Optical fibers exist in laboratories, but are not yet ready for large scale use.
• By doping quartz glass with germanium, researchers at Corning (cf 1970) makes a optic fiber with an attenuation of only 4 dB per kilometer. (cf 1986)
• Texas Instruments introduces the TMS1000 one-chip microcomputer. It integrates 1KB ROM and 32 bytes of RAM with a simple 4-bit processor.
• National Semiconductor introduces the IMP-16 microprocessor.
  

  

  This is how Pong was generally played
• Canada's Automatic Electronic Systems introduces the world's first programmable word processor with a video screen, the AES 90. The computer system uses magnetic disks for storage, and a custom-built microprocessor.
• December, Multics MSS 18.0 is released.
• November, Atari is founded by Nolan Bushnell and ships Pong, the first commercial video game.
• November, researchers at Xerox PARC begin work on a prototype Alto personal computer.
• October, in Washington, DC, the ARPAnet is demonstrated for the public at the International Conference on Computer Communication (ICCC). The demo is a success.
• October 23, Ceefax is announced by the BBC, which outlines a series of tests to be conducted.
• October, the first issue of People's Computer Company is released.
• August, IBM introduces System/370 models 158 and 168 featuring virtual memory.
• August, Scelbi Computer Consulting Company begins design work on what would be the Scelbi-8H microcomputer.
• June 12, in the second edition of the UNIX Programmer's Manual, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie write "the number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected". The C programming language is developed by Ritchie. For more UNIX history, see

Peter H Salus, A Quarter Century of UNIX, Addison-Wesley, 1994, ISBN 0-201-54777-5

• April 1, introduction of the Intel 8008 microprocessor, operating at 200 kHz, performing 60,000 instructions per second, having an 8 bit bus, 3,500 transistors based on 10-micron technology, able to address 16 kBytes of memory. The processor was originally developed for Computer Terminal Corporation (later called Datapoint).
• March 15, date of the first UNIX manual page for cc, the C compiler.
• February 9, Patent application for teletext is filed by the BBC in London. (cf 1971)
• Louis Pouzin leads the French effort to build its own ARPANET - CYCLADES
• RFC 318: Telnet specification

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Robert Kahn obtained a Ph.D. degree from Princeton University in 1964, worked for a while at AT&T Bell Laboratories, and then became an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT. He later went to work at Bolt Beranek and Newman, and helped build the Interface Message Processor.

In 1972, Kahn was hired by Lawrence Roberts at the IPTO to work on networking technologies, and in October he gave a demonstration of an ARPANET network connecting 40 different computers at the International Computer Communication Conference, making the network widely known for the first time to people from around the world.

Kahn then began work on development of a standard open-architecture network model, where any computer could communicate with any other, independent of individual hardware and software configuration. He set four goals for the TCP design:

• Network Connectivity. Any network could connect to another network through a gateway.
• Distribution. There would be no central network administration or control.
• Error Recovery. Lost packets would be retransmitted.
• Black Box Design. No internal changes would have to be made to a computer to connect it to the network.

In the spring of 1973, Vinton Cerf joined Kahn on the project. They started by conducting research on reliable data communications across packet radio networks, and then studied the Networking Control Protocol, building on it to create the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).

TCP had powerful error and retransmission capabilities, and provided extremely reliable communications. It was subsequently layered into two protocols, TCP/IP, where TCP handles high level services like retransmission of lost packets, and IP handles packet addressing and transmission.

Kahn has continued to nurture the development of the Internet over the years through shepherding the standards process and related activities, and is now President of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), a not-for-profit organization which performs research in the public interest on strategic development of network-based information technologies.

The following publications provide additional information:

• Chapter 2- The Role of Government in the Evolution of the Internet; Revolution in the U.S. Information Infrastructure; National Academy of Sciences; 1994.
• RFC 6; Conversation With Bob Kahn; 10 April, 1969.