Instead of having a single inventor, the Internet was developed by many people over many years. The following people are Internet pioneers who have been recognized for their contribution to its early and ongoing development. These contributions include theoretical foundations, building early networks, specifying protocols, and expansion beyond a research tool to wide deployment. This list includes people who were:
acknowledged by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn in their seminal 1974 paper on internetworking, "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication"; or received the IEEE Internet Award; or have been inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame; or are included on the Stanford University "Birth of the Internet" plaque. Among the pioneers, along with Cerf and Kahn, Bob Metcalfe, Donald Davies, Louis Pouzin, Steve Crocker and Ray Tomlinson meet three out of the four criteria above; as well as Jon Postel, considering the 2003 IEEE Internet award on which he is posthumously cited. Davies and Kahn are featured in the 1972 documentary film Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing along with several early pioneers. Other Internet pioneers, who made notable contributions to the development of the Internet but do not meet any of the four criteria above, are listed in the final section of the article. The pioneers are listed in rough chronological order, reflecting the process through which the Internet developed.
Birth of the Internet plaque A plaque commemorating the "Birth of the Internet" was dedicated at a conference on the history and future of the Internet on 28 July 2005 and is displayed at Stanford University.
Background The seminal paper on internetworking, "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication", published in 1974 by Vint Cerf, at Stanford University, and Bob Kahn, at ARPA, acknowledges a number of early members of the International Network Working Group (INWG): "The authors wish to thank a number of colleagues for helpful comments during early discussions of international network protocols, especially R. Metcalfe, R. Scantlebury, D. Walden, and H. Zimmerman; D. Davies and L. Pouzin who constructively commented on the fragmentation and accounting issues; and S. Crocker who commented on the creation and destruction of associations". The first version of TCP, RFC 675, was written later that year by Cerf with Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine. The introduction states "The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of R. Tomlinson ..., D. Belsnes, J. Burchfiel, M. Galland, R. Kahn, D. Lloyd, W. Plummer, and J. Postel all of whose good ideas and counsel have had a beneficial effect (we hope) on this protocol design. In the early phases of the design work, R. Metcalfe, A. McKenzie, H. Zimmerman, G. LeLann, and M. Elie were most helpful in explicating the various issues to be resolved." Subsequently, ARPA funded another working group to develop TCP for use for internetworking. Over two hundred Internet Experiment Notes (IEN) were produced, documenting the group's work. Only a few of the people who authored notes, or who participated in the work or whose work was referenced in the notes are named on the "Birth of the Internet" plaque. Robert Metclafe, Yogen Dalal and John Shoch contributed to discussions leading up to the splitting of TCP, which influenced the work of Jon Postel at the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California (USC-ISI) published as the second Internet Experiment Note (IEN2). TCP version 2, published in 1977 (IEN5), authored by Cerf, states that "Although the list of participants in the TCP work is very long (see ... the final TCP project report), special acknowledgements are due to R. Kahn, R. Tomlinson, Y. Dalal, R. Karp and C. Sunshine for their active participation In the design of TCP." At that time, the "Final Report of the Internetwork TCP Project" was to be written by: Cerf, who led the work at Stanford University and had moved to ARPA to manage the program with Kahn; Peter T. Kirstein, who led the work at University College London (UCL); and Paal Spilling, who led the work at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (NDRE); and, in addition, three of their team members who were Stephen Edge and Andrew Hinchley at UCL, who authored the first IEN (along with their colleague Chris Bennett who authored several other IENs), and Richard Karp at Stanford. The preface of version 3, published in 1978 by Cerf and Postel, states that "The evolution from TCP version 2 to version 3 was influenced by many people, but special mention should be made of the work at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science on the Data Stream Protocol (DSP) by Dave Clark and Dave Reed. Many of the specific changes introduced in version 3 were first described by Ray Tomlinson of BBN." It goes on to add that "This edition of the specification benefited from the comments of the following reviewers: Michael Padlipsky, Carl Sunshine, John Day, Gary Grossman, and Ray Tomlinson". Postel published version 4 later that year, in which TCP and IP were split into separate protocols, the preface of which notes "This revised edition of the version 4 specification was influenced by the comments of the following: Vint Cerf, Dick Watson, Carl Sunshine, Danny Cohen, Dave Clark, John Day, Gary Grossman, Jim Mathis, Bill Plummer, Jack Haverty, and the whole TCP Working Group." The bibliography of each of the TCP versions references papers published by many more researchers active in the field at the time. The final report of the project, which was orchestrated and funded by ARPA, was eventually published by Cerf alone in 1980 under the title "Final Report of the Stanford University TCP Project" (IEN151); several of the people mentioned in the report are named on the plaque. Cerf has discussed the role of some of the participants in his oral history, including Roger Scantlebury and Donald Davies; his graduate students at Stanford, Judy Estrin, Richard Karp, Yogan Dalal, and Carl Sunshine; and visiting researchers Gérard Le Lann, Dag Belsnes, James Mathis, Darryl Rubin, and Ronald Crane.
Inscription The text printed and embossed in black into the brushed bronze surface of the Stanford plaque reads:
J. C. R. Licklider
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