ALL,,,,30 YEARS AGO...
Internet got its start Labor Day 1969
By Mike Tarsala, CBS MarketWatch
Last Update: 2:45 PM ET Sep 4, 1999
NewsWatch
LOS ANGELES (CBS.MW) -- To hear Leonard Kleinrock tell it, the
birth of the Internet started with a work crew that didn't observe Labor
Day.
It was the couch potato's favorite holiday, 1969,
and workers at the University of California Los
Angles were hustling to hoist a phone booth-sized
machine – ironically called an IMP – up the side of
the school's Boelter Hall.
Lucky for Kleinrock, the workers obliged. The
following Tuesday, after considerable tinkering,
Kleinrock, a UCLA engineering professor, led a
team of research students that used the massive
Interface Message Processor, or IMP, to send the
world's first Internet data transmission.
The IMP computer -- now called a switch -- and
the system of sending the data used in the
experiment -- now called packet switching -- are
fundamental building blocks that allow messages to
be sent over the Internet.
Kleinrock's work is hardly a blockbuster, as
anniversary celebrations go. Even when the
message was sent that day in 1969, no reporters
were on hand. There isn't even a photo of the
transmission.
But to some technology executives and technology investors, Kleinrock's
experiment is worthy of praise and remembrance, says Pete Solvik, chief
information officer of networking giant Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO: news,
msgs).
"Thirty years ago today was the first time anyone laid down a standard – a
highway – that is used to change the way people work, live and learn,"
Solvik said.
Big bucks
It's also made millions of people richer. Electronic commerce – the buying
revolution spawned by the Internet – will be a $328 billion market in
2000, and a more than a trillion-dollar market by 2002, according to
Forrester Research.
In the second quarter of
1999, investors sank
$3.81 billion in
Internet-related
companies, reports
Venture One. That
accounts for roughly
half of all technology
investments.
Internet investments have been on fire – especially in recent months.
According to Venture One, the dollar amount of venture-backed
investment in the second quarter increased 45% -- the highest
quarter-to-quarter increase in history.
Even before the first message was sent across the Internet – or the
ARPANET as it was then called – Kleinrock had big plans for what the
nationwide computer network could become.
"As of now, computer networks are in their infancy," Kleinrock was
quoted as saying in the UCLA press release publicizing the group's
planned achievement, dated July 3, 1969. "But as they grow up and
become more sophisticated, we will probably see the spread of
‘computer utilities', which like present electric and telephone utilities, will
service individual homes and offices across the country."
Ironically, it's the same mantra being sold by technology chief executives
such as Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Scott McNealy. He says the future of
computing is in selling software applications that are available over the
Internet as "utilities."
"McNealy was probably a young whipper-snapper back then," Kleinrock
said in an interview with CBS.MarketWatch.com, jokingly taking credit
for Sun's marketing scheme.
First message
Kleinrock's success broke new technology ground, says Mark Breier,
chief executive of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Beyond.com (BYND: news,
msgs). In October 1969, a month after swapping data between the IMP
and UCLA computers, the first e-mail-like message was sent, from
UCLA to the Stanford Institute's research lab in Palo Alto, Calif.
The message was supposed to be a simple login message of three letters:
L-O-G. But the system crashed before the data was sent. The L and the
O made it.
Breier marvels at how far we've come. Today, the simplest of Internet
applications – e-mail – is changing communications. It's given away for
free, and used by millions.
At the very least, it's a boon to business, he says.
"For me to call (Dell Computer CEO) Michael Dell and for him to call me
back is 72 hours of trying to schedule things," Breier said. "If I e-mail
Michael Dell, he'll write me back in half an hour.
But the Internet and e-mail have other, perhaps nobler applications,
Kleinrock says. His 92-year-old mother began using e-mail and surfing
the Internet this year.
"My father passed a week ago Sunday … This will give her a way to
reach out more easily than before," Kleinrock said.
In the next 30 years, executives ponder that the Internet will change
people's lives in countless ways. Most admit that they can't conceive of
all the possibilities.
Long-term Internet trends to watch include virtual reality Internet
applications that could become available once the Internet's data pipes
become fat enough, Cisco's Solvik says.
"The kinds of things that are going to be interesting are things like voice
recognition and voice synthesis," Solvik said.
And in the next 30 years, the Internet will most certainly conduct the
majority of all data and financial transactions handled from business to
business, Solvik said.
It's unclear how pervasive online retailing will become, he says.
"It may be tough to try on shoes on the Internet, even in 30 years," Solvik
said.
Trends to watch
Current Internet trends to watch include open source software, such as
Linux, that will work with electronic commerce software, says Ron
Conway, a venture capitalist with Angel Investors LP.
Other trends include the number of small business running their
applications from the Internet, and the networking hardware explosion
that's to come from broadband media, he says.
But the Internet trends of today and tomorrow wouldn't be possible
without the work done 30 years ago, Conway says.
"Let's not forget where it all started," Conway said.
Humbly, Kleinrock says he's just happy that his experiment worked. He
remembers a room full of 15 people, each ready to point a finger at
someone else, if the data transmission went afoul.
"We were doing an engineering job," he said. "We didn't really think of it
as a monumental achievement; it was an engineering achievement."
Mike Tarsala is an online reporter for CBS MarketWatch.
|
