{"id":24608,"date":"2022-05-04T09:08:46","date_gmt":"2022-05-04T14:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=24608"},"modified":"2022-05-04T09:08:46","modified_gmt":"2022-05-04T14:08:46","slug":"obit-watch-may-4-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=24608","title":{"rendered":"Obit watch: May 4, 2022."},"content":{"rendered":"

David Walden<\/a>. There may be some folks out there for whom that rings a bell. For the rest of the crowd, he was one of the pioneers of the early Internet.<\/p>\n

In 1969, Mr. Walden was part of a small team of talented young engineers whose mission was to build the Interface Message Processor. Its function was to switch data among computers linked to the nascent Arpanet, the precursor to the internet. The first I.M.P. was installed that year at the University of California, Los Angeles. The I.M.P.s would be crucial to the internet until the Arpanet was decommissioned in 1989.<\/a>
\nMr. Walden was the first computer programmer to work with the team. \u201cThe I.M.P. guys,\u201d as they came to call themselves, developed the computer in nine frenetic months under a contract secured by Bolt Beranek and Newman (now Raytheon BBN), a technology company in Cambridge, Mass.<\/a>
\nThe I.M.P.s served as translators between mainframe computers at different locations and the network itself. Each I.M.P. translated what came over the network into the particular language of that location\u2019s main computer. The translation work of the I.M.P. evolved into today\u2019s network routers.<\/a>
\nThe work of Mr. Walden and his colleagues was unprecedented. \u201cThey had no models to draw on,\u201d said Marc Weber, a curatorial director at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. \u201cThey were creating out of whole cloth a new class of machine.\u201d<\/a>
\nHe added, \u201cThey took a very new idea at the time and turned it into a living, breathing, working machine with its own software and protocols that became an essential component of the network that grew to connect all of us.\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Noted: the NYT<\/strong> obit is by Katie Hafner. Her book with Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet<\/a><\/strong> (affiliate link) covers this and lots of other early Internet history, and I enthusiastically recommend it.<\/p>\n

Lawrence<\/a> sent over an obit for Kailia Posey<\/a>, who was on \u201cToddlers & Tiaras\u201d as a child. She was 16 years old, and according to her family, died by suicide.<\/p>\n

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a good page of additional resources<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Walden. There may be some folks out there for whom that rings a bell. For the rest of the crowd, he was one of the pioneers of the early Internet. In 1969, Mr. Walden was part of a small team of talented young engineers whose mission was to build the Interface Message Processor. Its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geek","category-obits","category-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24609,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24608\/revisions\/24609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}