Editing Packet switching (section)

=== The "paternity dispute" ===

Roberts claimed in later years that, by the time of the October 1967 SOSP, he already had the concept of packet switching in mind (although not yet named and not written down in his paper published at the conference, which a number of sources describe as "vague"), and that this originated with his old colleague, Kleinrock, who had written about such concepts in his Ph.D. research in 1961-2.<ref name=":19" /><ref name=":18" /><ref name=":20" /><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kirstein |first=Peter T. |date=2009 |title=The early history of packet switching in the UK |journal=IEEE Communications Magazine |volume=47 |issue=2 |pages=18–26 |doi=10.1109/MCOM.2009.4785372 |s2cid=34735326 |quote=It is more difficult to establish at this time, however, whether Larry intended to switch the fragments as independent packets in the ARPAnet before he heard of the NPL work; certainly he now claims that this was always his intention.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=technicshistory |date=2019-06-02 |title=ARPANET, Part 2: The Packet |url=https://technicshistory.com/2019/06/02/arpanet-part-2-the-packet/ |access-date=2024-06-21 |website=Creatures of Thought |language=en |quote=The above description of how packet-switching came to be is the most widely-accepted one. However, there is an alternative version. Roberts claimed in later years that by the time of the Gatlinburg symposium, he already had the basic concepts of packet-switching well in mind, and that they originated with his old colleague Len Kleinrock, who had written about them as early as 1962, as part of his Ph.D. research on communication nets. It requires a great deal of squinting to extract anything resembling packet-switching from Kleinrock’s work, however, and no other contemporary textual evidence that I have come across backs the Kleinrock/Roberts account.}}</ref> In 1997, along with seven other [[Internet pioneers]], Roberts and Kleinrock co-wrote "Brief History of the Internet" published by the [[Internet Society]].<ref>{{citation |author= Barry M. Leiner, Vinton G. Cerf, David D. Clark, Robert E. Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Daniel C. Lynch, Jon Postel, Larry G. Roberts, Stephen Wolff |title=Brief History of the Internet |publisher=Internet Society |date=1997|url=https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/doc/2017/brief-history-internet/}}</ref> In it, Kleinrock is described as having "published the first paper on packet switching theory in July 1961 and the first book on the subject in 1964". Many sources about the history of the Internet began to reflect these claims as uncontroversial facts. This became the subject of what [[Katie Hafner]] called a "paternity dispute" in The New York Times in 2001.<ref name=":8">{{citation |author=Katie Hafner |title=A Paternity Dispute Divides Net Pioneers |date=November 8, 2001 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/08/technology/a-paternity-dispute-divides-net-pioneers.html?pagewanted=all |newspaper=New York Times |quote="The Internet is really the work of a thousand people," Mr. Baran said. "And of all the stories about what different people have done, all the pieces fit together. It's just this one little case that seems to be an aberration."}}</ref>

The disagreement about Kleinrock's contribution to packet switching dates back to a version of the above claim made on Kleinrock's profile on the UCLA Computer Science department website sometime in the 1990s. Here, he was referred to as the "Inventor of the Internet Technology".<ref>{{cite web |last1=UCLA Computer Science Dept. |title=Leonard Kleinrock, Professor (archived) |url=http://www.lk.cs.ucla.edu |website=UCLA Computer Science Dept. |access-date=28 December 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040227150208/http://www.lk.cs.ucla.edu:80/index.html |archive-date=Feb 27, 2004}}</ref> The webpage's depictions of Kleinrock's achievements provoked anger among some early Internet pioneers.<ref name=":0">{{cite book |last1=Isaacson |first1=Walter |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4V9koAEACAAJ&pg=PA245 |title=The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution |date=2014 |publisher=Simon & Schuster |isbn=9781476708690 |pages=244–6 |author-link=Walter Isaacson}}</ref> The dispute over [[Scientific priority|priority]] became a public issue after Donald Davies posthumously published a paper in 2001 in which he denied that Kleinrock's work was related to packet switching. Davies also described ARPANET project manager [[Lawrence Roberts (scientist)|Larry Roberts]] as supporting Kleinrock, referring to Roberts' writings online and Kleinrock's UCLA webpage profile as "very misleading".<ref>{{citation |author=Donald W. Davies |title=An Historical Study of the Beginnings of Packet Switching |date=2001 |url=https://academic.oup.com/comjnl/article-abstract/44/3/152/415514 |journal=The Computer Journal |quote=I can find no evidence that he understood the principles of packet switching.}}</ref><ref name=":9">{{Cite journal |last=Harris |first=Trevor, University of Wales |date=2009 |editor-last=Pasadeos |editor-first=Yorgo |title=Who is the Father of the Internet? The Case for Donald Davies |url=https://www.academia.edu/378261 |url-status=dead |journal=Variety in Mass Communication Research |language=en |publisher=ATINER |pages=123–134 |isbn=978-960-6672-46-0 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220502025941/https://www.academia.edu/378261/Who_is_the_Father_of_the_Internet_The_Case_for_Donald_Davies |archive-date=May 2, 2022 |quote=Leonard Kleinrock and Lawrence (Larry) Roberts, neither of whom were directly involved in the invention of packet switching ... Dr Willis H. Ware, Senior Computer Scientist and Research at the RAND Corporation, notes that Davies (and others) were troubled by what they regarded as in appropriate claims on the invention of packet switching}}</ref> [[Walter Isaacson]] wrote that Kleinrock's claims "led to an outcry among many of the other Internet pioneers, who publicly attacked Kleinrock and said that his brief mention of breaking messages into smaller pieces did not come close to being a proposal for packet switching".<ref name=":0" /> 

Davies' paper reignited a previous dispute over who deserves credit for getting the ARPANET online between engineers at [[Bolt, Beranek, and Newman]] (BBN) who had been involved in building and designing the ARPANET IMP on the one side, and ARPA-related researchers on the other.<ref name=":2A3" /><ref name="F.E. Froehlich, A. Kent" /> This earlier dispute is exemplified by BBN's [[Will Crowther]], who in a 1990 oral history described Paul Baran's packet switching design (which he called [[hot-potato routing]]), as "crazy" and non-sensical, despite the ARPA team having advocated for it.<ref>{{citation|author=Judy O'Neill | title=Oral history interview with William Crowther| date=12 March 1990| hdl=11299/107235|url=https://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/11299/107235|quote=...there were all sorts of crazy ideas about, and most of them didn't make any sense. There was this 'hot potato' routing which somebody was advocating, which was just crazy.}}</ref> The reignited debate caused other former BBN employees to make their concerns known, including Alex McKenzie, who followed Davies in disputing that Kleinrock's work was related to packet switching, stating "... there is nothing in the entire 1964 book that suggests, analyzes, or alludes to the idea of packetization".<ref>{{citation |author=Alex McKenzie |title=Comments on Dr. Leonard Kleinrock's claim to be "the Father of Modern Data Networking" |year=2009 |url=http://alexmckenzie.weebly.com/comments-on-kleinrocks-claims.html |access-date=April 23, 2015}}</ref>

Former [[Information Processing Techniques Office|IPTO]] director [[Robert W. Taylor|Bob Taylor]] also joined the debate, stating that "authors who have interviewed dozens of Arpanet pioneers know very well that the Kleinrock-Roberts claims are not believed".<ref>{{citation|author=Robert Taylor|title=Birthing the Internet: Letters From the Delivery Room; Disputing a Claim|date=November 22, 2001|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/22/technology/l-birthing-the-internet-letters-from-the-delivery-room-disputing-a-claim-325210.html|newspaper=New York Times|author-link=Robert Taylor (computer scientist)}}</ref> Walter Isaacson notes that "until the mid-1990s Kleinrock had credited [Baran and Davies] with coming up with the idea of packet switching".<ref name=":0" />

A subsequent version of Kleinrock's biography webpage was copyrighted in 2009 by Kleinrock.<ref>{{citation |author=Leonard Kleinrock |title=Leonard Kleinrock - UCLA Dept. of Computer Science |url=https://www.lk.cs.ucla.edu/index.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231205193349/https://www.lk.cs.ucla.edu/index.html |archive-date=December 5, 2023 |quote=He developed the mathematical theory of data networks, the technology underpinning the Internet, while a graduate student at MIT in the period from 1960-1962.  In that work, he also modeled the packetization of messages and solved for a key performance gain that packetization provides.}}</ref> He was called on to defend his position over subsequent decades.<ref name=":14">{{citation |title=Letters to the editor |journal=IEEE Communications |date=February 2011|doi=10.1109/MCOM.2011.5706298 |url=https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5706298|url-access=subscription }}</ref> In 2023, he acknowledged that his published work in the early 1960s was about message switching and claimed he was thinking about packet switching.<ref>{{Cite AV media |url=https://www.inc.com/computerfreaks |title=Computer Freaks |date=June 22, 2023 |last=Haughney Dare-Bryan |first=Christine |type=Podcast |publisher=Inc. Magazine |series=Chapter Two: In the Air}}</ref> Primary sources and historians recognize Baran and Davies for independently inventing the concept of digital packet switching used in modern computer networking including the ARPANET and the Internet.<ref name=":16" /><ref name="Pelkeyp42" /><ref name="Abbate20002" /><ref name=":13">{{Cite book |last1=Norberg |first1=Arthur L. |title=Transforming computer technology: information processing for the Pentagon, 1962-1986 |last2=O'Neill |first2=Judy E. |date=1996 |publisher=Johns Hopkins Univ. Press |isbn=978-0-8018-5152-0 |series=Johns Hopkins studies in the history of technology New series |location=Baltimore |pages=153–196}} Prominently cites Baran and Davies as sources of inspiration, and nowhere mentions Kleinrock's work.</ref><ref>{{cite report |url=https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA115440.pdf |title=A History of the ARPANET: The First Decade |date=1 April 1981 |publisher=Bolt, Beranek & Newman Inc. |pages=13, 53 of 183 |quote=Aside from the technical problems of interconnecting computers with communications circuits, the notion of computer networks had been considered in a number of places from a theoretical point of view. Of particular note was work done by Paul Baran and others at the Rand Corporation in a study "On Distributed Communications" in the early 1960's. Also of note was work done by Donald Davies and others at the National Physical Laboratory in England in the mid-1960's. ... Another early major network development which affected development of the ARPANET was undertaken at the National Physical Laboratory in Middlesex, England, under the leadership of D. W. Davies. |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121201013642/http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA115440 |archive-date=1 December 2012 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Kleinrock has received many awards for his ground-breaking [[applied mathematical research]] on packet switching, carried out in the 1970s, which was an extension of his pioneering work in the early 1960s on the optimization of message delays in communication networks.<ref name=":12" /><ref>{{Cite web |title=Leonard Kleinrock |url=https://samueli.ucla.edu/people/leonard-kleinrock/ |access-date=2024-01-20 |website=UCLA Samueli School Of Engineering |language=en-US}}</ref> However, Kleinrock's claims that his work in the early 1960s originated the concept of packet switching and that his work was a source of the packet switching concepts used in the ARPANET have affected sources on the topic, which has created methodological challenges in the historiography of the Internet.<ref name=":8" /><ref name=":0" /><ref name=":9" /><ref name=":14" /> Historian Andrew L. Russell said "'Internet history' also suffers from a ... methodological, problem: it tends to be too close to its sources. Many Internet pioneers are alive, active, and eager to shape the histories that describe their accomplishments. Many museums and historians are equally eager to interview the pioneers and to publicize their stories".<ref>{{Cite conference |last=Russell |first=Andrew |date=2012 |title=Histories of Networking vs. the History of the Internet |url=https://arussell.org/papers/russell-SIGCIS-2012.pdf |conference=2012 SIGCIS Workshop |page=6}}</ref>