Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet

by Katie Hafner

Harvard had a PDP-10, too, and Metcalfe offered to make a duplicate interface to give to Harvard. But the networking people at Harvard declined the offer. “They said they couldn’t possibly let a graduate student do something that important,” said Metcalfe. Harvard officials decided to have BBN do it. BBN in turn gave the job to its graduate student in residence, Ben Barker, who recruited John McQuillan, a fellow Harvard graduate student, to help him.

By virtue of its quiet momentum, TCP/IP had prevailed over the official OSI standard. Its success provided an object lesson in technology and how it advances. “Standards should be discovered, not decreed,”