And that, explained Scantlebury, was the sad part of the story: the powers-that-be at the British Postal Service, which had absolute control over the U.K. telecommunications system, had flatly refused to fund Davies's vision of nationwide packet switching. They couldn't even see the point of a demonstration. So, said Scantlebury, having gotten there first, the NPL group would now have to sit back and watch as the Americans did a packet-switched network for real.
