[Air-l] ARPAnet history question

[Jay Hauben]

Dear Ulla.

About the ARPANET, one node a month were brought up each month in late 
1969.

Each site had an IMP. The 4 IMPS formed the communications subnetwork. 
To each IMP was attached a host. These hosts were time sharing 
systems. Therefore the number of terminals or even computers connected 
via the 4 node ARPANET was more than 4.

The history of the ARPANET and timesharing can be seen in chapters 6, 
7 and 8 of "Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the 
Internet by Michael Hauben and ronda Hauben". An online version is at:

http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120

The hard cover edition was published by the IEEE Computer Science 
Press in 1997.

On August 30, 1969, the first IMP arrived at the University of 
California, Los Angeles (UCLA) which was to be the first site of the 
new network. It was connected to the SDS Sigma 7 computer at UCLA 
using the GENIE operating system. Shortly thereafter IMPs were 
delivered to the other three sites in this initial testbed network. At 
Stanford Research Institute (SRI), the IMP was connected to an SDS-940 
computer using the SEX operating system. At the University of 
California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), the IMP was connected to an IBM 
360/75 using OS/MTV. And at the University of Utah (Utah), the fourth 
site, the IMP was connected to a DEC PDP-10 using the TENEX operating 
system.

By the end of 1969, the first four IMPs had been connected to the host 
computers at their individual sites and the network connections 
between the IMPs were operational. The researchers and scientists 
involved could begin to identify the problems they had to solve to 
develop a working network where there would be communication from host 
to host.

The first sites of the ARPANET were picked to provide either network 
support services or unique resources. The key services the first four 
sites provided were(24):

      UCLA - Network Measurement Center
      SRI  - Network Information Center
      UCSB - Culler-Fried interactive mathematics
      UTAH - graphics (hidden line removal)


A much cited version of The Untold History of the ARPANET is

http://www.dei.isep.ipp.pt/docs/arpa.html)