Recently I finished reading Where Wizards stay up late. It's the history of the very thing that made possible the very thing that you are doing at this very moment. The interwebz ;). It's a light read, filled with interesting bits of trivia. Tracks the period from the birth of ARPAnet (which acted as a foundation for the Internet) in 1969, to its demise in 1989. Those 20 years surely changed the world. But what makes this book special is you can feel it in your bones; the engineering challenges, and hardwork, genius and sometimes old plain luck overcoming them. Like the turning ON of the the first IMP; the first network activity, a login from the computer at SRI to one that at UCLA, which failed because SRI had autocompletion of commands, but UCLA could not handle more than one character at a time; and many many more. I mean, if you are a developer, these kinda things happen to you all the time. You also get to meet many of the unsung Herores of the Net. Like J.C.R.Licklider; I had heard his name, but did not actually know much about him. A glimpse at the scope of his vision was a rare privilege. Here are a few more,
Paul Baran and Donald Davies: Both came up with the idea of Packet Switching at around the same time, Baran in US and Davies in UK. Davies coined the term 'Packet Switching'.
Ray Tomlinson: The guy who put the '@' sign in the email address.
Tom Marill: Coined the term Protocol in context of communication. Earlier it was used almost exclusively by Diplomats.
There is also a certain inspirational value to the book, I mean, these smart people building something wonderful, and the world actually letting them do it. I think everyone will benifit from reading this book.
Enjoy !!
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