Message from discussion
Is Al Gore The Father of the Internet?^
From: "Phillip Hallam-Baker" <hal...@ai.mit.edu>
Subject: Re: Is Al Gore The Father of the Internet?^
Date: 2000/09/21
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"Kragen Sitaker" <kra...@dnaco.net> wrote in message
news:tvay5.1335$tI.126203@news-east.usenetserver.com...
> In article <8q6i463...@enews3.newsguy.com>,
> John S. Dyson <dy...@iquest.net> wrote:
> >AT&T has always been a stalwart for universal service. AT&T is not
> >an angel, but Al Gore was only one, unnecessary component of the internet
> >revolution. IMO, the genius was the initial hypertext work. FTP
> >don't cut it, man... :-).
>
> I'd like to point out that the first network-accessible hypertext was
> done at SRI in 1968-1969 by Engelbart et al. and demonstrated to
> hundreds of people; the concept of a huge hypertext database containing
> all human knowledge was published in detail in 1945 in a national
> magazine, along with a technically plausible implementation sketch.
True, and before that didn't he work on the MAC project? They had
a personal computer back in the early 60s, about the size of a small
mansion.
> The initial Web work was done by Tim Berners-Lee and Phillip
> Hallam-Baker, with whom you have been arguing, in 1990-1992. But it
> wasn't until after the NSFNet AUP went down that the Web exploded in
> 1994 and 1995.
If you are going to name names, also Robert Caillau, Dan Connoly,
Pei Wei, Eric Bina (true author of Mosaic), Marc Andressen, Dave
Raggett, Henrik Frystick Nielsen, Roy Fielding, ... My contribution
was by no means the biggest, on the other hand I did know everything
that went on at the time.
And with the exception of Dan and a handfull of others we were
all paid by academic research labs on government contracts of
one sort or another with one government or other.
> > The individual who at CERN sort-of invented
> >html (or was it http) is the winner of the creation of the internet,
> >because without that, there would be NOTHING, other than what Gore
> >partially participated in funding.
>
> It's pretty silly to argue that Tim and Phillip invented the Internet,
> especially when you're arguing with Phillip and he's telling you Al
> Gore deserves the credit you're trying to deny him ;)
Some of the credit, hey lets not over do things here :-)
> BTW, both HTML and HTTP were developed at CERN in the early 1990s, by
> Tim et al. (Phillip's allusion to a "302 not found" error earlier in
> this thread makes me think he didn't participate much in the HTTP
> part, though. :)
Hey, give me a break, it was eight years ago!
Its like when I did the referer field. I got nothing but grief for my choice
of spelling. I am now attempting to get the spelling corrected in the OED
since my spelling is used several billion times a minute more than theirs.
Phill