Innovation in Information Technalagy
`http /Avww. nep.edu/catalog/10798. html
`
`52
`
`INNOVATION IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
`
`ware moved from the ungainly and delicate world of vacuum tubes and
`paper tape to the reliable and efficient world of transistors and magnetic
`storage. The 1950s sawthe development of key technical underpinnings
`for widespread. computing: cheap and reliable transistors available in
`large quantities, rotating magnetic drum and disk storage, magnetic core
`memory, and beginning work in semiconductor packaging andminiatur-
`ization, particularly for missiles. In telecommunications, American Tele-
`phone and Telegraph (AT&T) introduced nationwide dialing and the first
`electronic switching systems at the end of the decade. A fledgling com-
`mercial computer industry emerged, led by International Business Ma-
`chines UBM) Owhich built its electronic computer capability internally)
`and Remington Rand (later Sperry Rand), which purchased Eckert-
`Mauchly Computer Corporation in 1950 and Engineering Research Asso-
`clates in 1952. Other important participants included Bendix, Burroughs,
`General Electric (GE), Honeywell, Philco, Raytheon, and Radio Corpora-
`tion of America (RCA).
`In computing, the technical cutting edge, however, was usually
`pushed forward in governmentfacilities, at government-funded research
`centers, or at private contractors doing government work. Government
`funding accounted for roughly three-quarters of the total computer field.
`A survey performed by the Army Ballistics Research Laboratoryin 1957,
`1959, and 1961lists every electronic stored-programcomputer in use in
`the country (the very possibility of compiling sucha list says a great deal
`about the community of computing at the time). The surveys reveal the
`large proportion of machines in use for government purposes, either by
`federal contractors or in government facilities.
`
`The Government's Early Role
`
`(From pp. 87-88): Before 1960, governrnent—as a funder and as a
`customer—dominated electronic computing. Federal support had no
`broad, coherent approach, however, arising somewhat ad hoe in indi-
`vidual federal agencies. The period was one of experimentation, both
`with the technology itself and with diverse mechanismsfor federal sup-
`port. From the panoplyof solutions, distinct successes andfailures can be
`discerned, from bothscientific and economic points of view. After 1960,
`computing was more prominently recognized as an issue for fecleral
`policy. The National Science Foundation and the National Academyof
`Sciences issued surveys and reports on thefield.
`if government was the main driver for computing research and de-
`velopment (R&D) during this period, the main driver for government
`was the defense needs of the Cold War. Events such as the explosion of a
`Soviet atomic bomb in 1949 and the Korean War in the 1930s heightened
`
`Page 1001 of 1714
`
`Capyright G National Academyof Sciences. All rights reserved.
`
`Page 1001 of 1714
`
`

`

`Innovation in Information Technalagy
`http /Avww. nep.edu/catalog/10798. html
`
`EXCERPTS FROM EARLIER CSTB REPORTS
`
`onGs
`
`international tensions and called for critical defense applications, espe-
`cially command-and-control and weapons design. Itis worth noting, how-
`ever, that suchforces did not exert a strong influence on telecommunica-
`tions, ar. area in which most R&D was performed within AT&Tfor civillan
`purposes. Long-distance transmission remained analog, althoughdigital
`systems were in development at AT&T's Bell Laboratories. Still, the newly
`emergent field of semiconductors was largely supported by defense in its
`early years. During the 1950s, the Department of Defense (DOD) sup-
`ported about 25 percent of transistor research at Bell Laboratories.
`However much the Cold War generated computer funding, during
`the 1950s dollars andscale remained relatively small comparedto other
`fields, such as aerospace applications, missile programs, aril the Navy's
`Polaris prograrn (although manvof these programs had significant com-
`puting components, especially for operations research and advanced man-
`agement techniques). By 1950, government investment in computing
`amounted to $15 million te $20 million per year.
`All of the major computer companies during the 1950s hadsignificant
`components of their R&D supported by government contracts of some
`type. At IBM, for example, federal contracts supported more than half of
`the R&D and about 35 percent of R&D as late as 1963 (onlyin the late
`1960s did this proportionof support trail off significantly, although abso-
`lute amounts still increased). The federal government supported projects
`and ideas the private sector would not fund, either for national security,
`to build up human capital, or to explore the capabilities of a complex,
`expensive technology whose long-term impact and use was uncertain.
`Manyfederally supported projects put in place prototype hardware on
`which researchers could do exploratory work.
`
`Establishment of Organizations
`
`(From pp. 88-95): The successful development projects of World War
`I, particularly radar and the atomic bomb,left policvmakers asking how
`to maintain the technological momentum in peacetime. Numerous new
`government organizations arose, attempting to sustain the creative atmo-
`sphere of the famous wartime research projects and to enhance national
`leadership in science and technology. Despite Vannevar Bush's efforts to
`establish a new national research foundation to support research in the
`nation’s universities, political difficulties prevented the bill from passing
`until 1950, and the National Science Foundation (NSF) did not become a
`significant player in computing until later in that decade. During the 15
`years immediately after World War I, research in computing and com-
`mitumications was supported by mission agencies of the federal govern-
`merit, such as DOD, the Department of Energy (DOE), and NASA. In
`
`Page 1002 of 1714
`
`Capyright G National Academyof Sciences. All rights reserved.
`
`Page 1002 of 1714
`
`

`

`Innovation in Information Technalagy
`http /Avww. nep.edu/catalog/10798. html
`
`on
`
`4
`
`INNOVATION IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
`
`retrospect, it seems that the nation was experimenting withdifferent mocl-
`els for supporting this intriguing newtechnology that required a subtle
`mix of scientific and engineering skill.
`
`Military Research Offices
`
`Continuity in basic science was provided primarily by the Office of
`Naval Research (ONR), created in 1946 explicitly to perpetuate the contri-
`butions scientists made to military problems during World War IL In
`computing, the agency took a variety of approaches simultaneously.First,
`it supported basic intellectual and mathematical work, particularly in
`numerical analysis. These projects proved instrumental in establishing a
`sound mathematical basis for computer design and computer processing.
`Second, ONR supported intellectual infrastructure in the infant fleld of
`computing, sponsoring conferences and publications for informationdis-
`semination. Merbers of ONR participated in founding the Association
`for Computing Machineryin 1947,
`ONR’s third approach to computing was to sponsor machine design
`arc construction. It ordered a computer for missile testing through the
`National Bureau of Standards from Raytheon, which became known as
`the Raydac machine, installed in 1932. ONR supported Whirlwind, MIT’s
`first digital computer and progenitor of real-time command-and-control
`systems. John von Neumann built a machine with support from ONRand
`other agencies at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, known as the
`DAS camputer. The project produced significant advances in computer
`architecture, and the design was widely copied by both government and
`industrial organizations.
`Other military services created offices on a model similar to that of
`ONR. The Air Force Office of Scientific Research was establishedin 1950
`to manage U.S. Air Force R&D activities. Similarly, the U.S. Armyestab-
`lished the ArmyResearch Office to manage and prornote Army programs
`in science and technology.
`
`National Bureau of Standards
`
`Arising out of its role as arbiter of weights and measures, the Na-
`tional Bureau of Standards (NBS) had long hadits own laboratories and
`technical expertise and had long served as a technical advisor to other
`government agencies. In the immediate postwar years, NBS sought to
`expand Its advisory role and help U.S. industry develop wartime technol-
`ogy for commercial purposes. NBS, through its National Applied Math-
`ematics Laboratory, acted as a kind of expert agent for other government
`agencies, selecting suppliers and overseeing construction and delivery of
`
`Page 1003 of 1714
`
`Capyright G National Academyof Sciences. All rights reserved.
`
`Page 1003 of 1714
`
`

`

`Innovation in Information Technalagy
`http /Avww. nep.edu/catalog/10798. html
`
`EXCERPTS FROM EARLIER CSTB REPORTS
`
`35
`
`new computers. For example, NBS contracted for the three initial Univac
`machines—the first commercial, electronic, digital, stored-program com-
`puters-—-one for the Census Bureau and two for the Air Materiel Com-
`mand.
`NBS also got into the business of building machines. Whenthe Univac
`order was plagued by technical delays, NBS built its own computer in-
`house. The Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) was built for
`the Air Force and dedicated in 1950, the first operational, electronic,
`stored-program computer in this country. NBS built a similar machine,
`the Standards Western Automatic Computer (SWAC) for the Navy onthe
`West Coast. Numerous problems were run on SEAC, andthe computer
`also served as a central facility for diffusing expertise in programming to
`other government agencies. Despite this significant hardware, however,
`NBS’sbid to be a government center for computing expertise ended in the
`
`mid-1950s, Caught up in postwar debates over science policy and a con-
`troversy over battery additives, NBS research funding was radically re-
`duced, and NBS lost its momentum in the fieid of computing.
`
`Atomic Energy Commission
`
`Nuclear weapons design and research have from the beginning pro-
`vided impetus to advances in large-scale computation. The first atomic
`bombs were designed only with desktop caiculators and punched-card
`equipment, but continued work on nuclear weapons provided some of
`the earliest applications for the newelectronic machines as they evolved.
`The first computation job run on the ENIAC in 1945 was an early calcula-
`tion for the hydrogen bomb project “Super.” In the late 1940s, the Los
`Alamos National Laboratory built its own computer, MANIAC, based on
`von Neumann ’s design for the Institute for Advanced Study computer at
`Princeton, and the Atomic Energy Cormmission (AEC) funded similar
`machines at Argonne National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Labo-
`ratory.
`in addition to building their own computers, the AEC laboratories
`were significant customers for supercomputers. The demand created by
`AEC laboratories for computing power provided companies with an in-
`centive to design more powerful computers with new designs. In the
`early 1950s, IBM built its 701, the Defense Calculator, partly with the
`assurance that Los Alamos and Livermore would each buyat least one. In
`1955,
`the AEC laboratory at Livermore, California, commissioned
`Remington Randto design and build the Livermore Automatic Research
`Computer (LARC), the first supercomputer. The mere specification for
`LARC advanced the state of the art, as the bidding competition required
`the use of transistors instead of vacuumtubes. IBM developed improved
`
`Page 1004 of 1714
`
`Capyright G National Academyof Sciences. All rights reserved.
`
`Page 1004 of 1714
`
`

`

`Innovation in Information Technalagy
`http /Avww. nep.edu/catalog/10798. html
`
`56
`
`INNOVATION IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
`
`ferrite-core memories and supercomputer designs with funding fromthe
`National Security Agency, and designed and built
`the Stretch
`supercomputer for the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, beginning it in
`1956 and installing it in 1961. Seven more Stretch supercomputers were
`built. Half of the Stretch supercomputers sold were used for nuclear
`weaponresearch anddesign.
`The AEC continued to specify and buy newer and faster
`supercomputers, including the Control Data 6600, the STAR 100, and the
`Cray 1 (although developed without AEC funds}, practically ensuring a
`market for continued advancements. AEC and DOE laboratories also
`developed much of the software used in high-performance computing
`including operating systems, numerical analysis software, and matrix
`evaluation routines. In addition to stimulating R&D in industry, theAEC
`laboratories also developed a large talent pool on which the computer
`industry and academia could draw. In fact, the head of IBM’s Applied
`science Department, Cuthbert Hurd, came directly to IBM in 1949 from
`the AEC’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Physicists worked on national
`security problems with government support providing demand, specifi-
`cations, and technical input, as well as dollars, for industry to makesig-
`nificant advances in cormputing technology.
`
`Private Organizations
`
`Not all the neworganizations created by the government to support
`computing were public. A number of new private organizations also
`sprang up with innovative newcharters and government encouragement
`that held prospects of initial funding support. In 1956,at the request of the
`Air Force, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created Project
`Lincoln, now known as the Lincoln. Laboratory, with a broad charter to
`study problems in air defense to protect the nation from nuclearattack.
`The Lincoln Laboratory then oversawthe construction of the Semi-Auito-
`matic Ground Environment (SAGE) air-defense system. In 1946, the Air
`Force and Dougias Aircraft created a joint venture, Project RAND, to
`study intercontinental warfare. In the following year RAND separated
`from Douglas and became the independent, nonprofit RAND Corpora-
`ton.
`RAND worked only for the Air Force until 1956, when it began to
`diversify to other defense and defense-related contractors, such as the
`Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Atomic Energy Commis-
`sion, and provided, for a time, what one researcher called “in some sense
`the world’s largest installation for scientific computing [in 1950].” RAND
`specialized in developing computer systems, such as the Johnniac, based
`on the IAS computer, which made RANDthe logical source for the pro-
`
`Page 1005 of 1714
`
`Capyright G National Academyof Sciences. All rights reserved.
`
`Page 1005 of 1714
`
`

`

`Innovation in Information Technalagy
`http /Avww. nep.edu/catalog/10798. html
`
`EXCERPTS FROM EARLIER CSTB REPORTS
`
`on ad
`
`gramming on SAGE. While working on SAGE, RAND trained hundreds
`of programmers, eventually leading to the spin-off of RAND's Systems
`Development Division and Systems Training Program into the Systems
`Development Corporation. Computers made a major impact on the sys-
`tems analysis and game theoretic approaches thatRAND andother simi-
`lar think tanks used in attempts to model nuclear and conventional
`warfighting strategies.
`Engineering Research Associates (RA) represented yet another form
`of government support: the private contractor growing out of a single
`government agency. With ERA, the Navyeffectively privatizedits war-
`time cryptographyorganization and was able to maintain civilian exper-
`tise throughthe radical postwar demobilization. ERA was founcledin St.
`Paul, Minnesota, in January 1946 by two engineers who had done cryp-
`tography for the Navyand their business partners. The Navy movedits
`Naval Computing Machine Laboratory from Daytonto St. Paul, and ERA
`essentially became the laboratory. ERA did some research, but if prima-
`rily worked on task-oriented, cost-plus contracts. As one participant re-
`called, “Tt was not a university atmosphere. It was “Build stuff. Make it
`work. Howdo you package it? Howdo youfix it? Howdo you document
`i?" ERA built a community of engineering skill, which became the
`foundation of the Minnesota computerindustry. In 1931, for example, the
`company hired Seymour Cray for his first job out of the University of
`Minnesota.
`As noted earlier, the RAND Corporation had contracted in 1955 to
`write much of the software for SAGE owing to its earlier experience in alr
`defense and its large pool of programmers. By 1936, the Systems Training
`Program of the RAND Corporation, the division assigned to SAGE, was
`larger than the rest of the corporation combined, and it spun off into the
`nonprofit Systems Development Corporation (SDC). SDCplayed a sig-
`nificant role in cornputertraining. As described by one of the participanis,
`“Part of 5DC’s nonprofit role was to be a university for programmers.
`Hence our policy in those days was not to oppose the recruiting of our
`personnel and not to match higher salary offers with an SDC raise.” By
`1963, SDC had trained taore than 10,000 employees in the field of cam-
`puter systems. Of those, 6,000 had moved to other businesses across the
`COuUMry,
`
`Observations
`
`(From pp. 95-96): In retrospect, the 1950s appear to have been a pe-
`riod of institutional and technological experimentation. This diversity of
`approaches, while it brought the fleld and the industry from virtually
`nothing to a tentative stability, was opento criticisms of waste, duplica-
`
`Page 1006 of 1714
`
`Capyright G National Academyof Sciences. All rights reserved.
`
`Page 1006 of 1714
`
`

`

`Innovation in Information Technalagy
`http /Avww. nep.edu/catalog/10798. html
`
`on
`
`3
`
`INNOVATION IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
`
`tion of effort, and ineffectiveness caused byrivalries among organizations
`and their funding sources. The Held was also driven largely by the needs
`of government agencies, with relatively litde input from computer-ori-
`ented scientists at the highest levels. Criticism remained muted during
`the decade when the military imperatives of the Cold War seemed to
`dominate all others, but one event late in the decade opened the entire
`system of federal research support to scrutiny: the launch of Sputnik in
`1957. Attacks mounted that the system of R&D needed to be changed, and
`they came not only fromthe press and the politicians but also from scien-
`tists themselves.
`
`1960-1970: Supporting a Continuing Revolution
`
`(From p. 96): Several significant events occurred to mark a transition
`from the infancy of information technology to a period of diffusion and
`growth. Most important of these was the launching of Sputnik in 1957,
`which sent convulsions through the U.S. science and engineering world
`and redoubled efforts to develop newtechnology. President Eisenhower
`elevated scientists and engineers to the highest levels of policy making.
`Thus was Inaugurated what some have called the golden age of U.S.
`research policy. Government support for informationtechnologytook off
`in the 1960s and assumedits modern form. The Kennedy administration
`brought a spirit of technocratic reform to the Pentagon and the introduc-
`tion of systems analysis and computer-based management toall aspects
`of running the military. Manyof the visions that set the research agendas
`for the following 15 years (and whose influence remains today} were set
`in the early years of the decade.
`
`Maturing of a Commercial Industry
`
`(From pp. 96-97): Perhaps most important, the early 1960s can be
`defined as the time when the commercial computer industry became sig-
`nificant on its own, independent of government funding and procure-
`ment. Computerized reservation systems began to proliferate, particu-
`larly the IBM/ American Airlines SABRE system, based in part on prior
`experience with military command-and-control systems (such as SAGE).
`The introduction of the IBM System /360 in 1964 solidified computer ap-
`plications in business, and the industryitself, as significant components
`of the economy.
`This newlyvital industry, dominated by “Snow White” (BM) and the
`“Seven Dwarfs” (Burroughs, Control Data, GE, Honeywell, NCR, RCA,
`andSperry Rand}, came to have several effects on government-supported
`R&D. First, and most obvious, some companies (mostly IBM} became
`
`Page 1007 of 1714
`
`Capyright G National Academyof Sciences. All rights reserved.
`
`Page 1007 of 1714
`
`

`

`Innovation in Information Technalagy
`http /Avww. nep.edu/catalog/10798. html
`
`EXCERPTS FROM EARLIER CSTB REPORTS
`
`39
`
`large enough to conduct their own in-house research. IBM’s ThomasJ.
`Watson Research Center was dedicated In 1961. Its director, Emanuel
`Piore, was recruited from ONR, and he emphasizedbasic research. Such
`laboratories not only expancledthe poolof researchers in computing and
`cormmunications but also supplied a source of applied research that al-
`lowed or, conversely, pushed federal support to focus increasingly on the
`longest-term, riskiest ideas and on problems unique to government. Sec-
`ond, the industry became a growing employer of computer professionals,
`providing impetus to educational programs at universities and making
`computer science and engineering increasinglyattractive career paths to
`talented young people.
`These years saw turning poirits in telecommunications as well. In
`1962, AT&T launched the first active cormmunications satellite, Telstar,
`which transmitted the first satellite-relay telephone call and the first live
`transatlantic television signal. That same year, a less-noticed but equally
`significant event occurred when AT&T installed thefirst commercial digi-
`tal-transmission. system. Twenty-four digital speech channels were time
`multiplexed onto a repeatered digital transmission line operating at 1.5
`megabits per second. In 1963, the first Stored Program Control electronic
`switching system was placed into service, inaugurating the use of digital
`computer technology for mainstream switching.
`The 1960s also saw the emergence of the field called computer sci-
`ence, arid several important university departments were founded during
`the decade, at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon in 1965 and at MIT in1968.
`Hardware platforms had stabilized enough to support a community of
`researchers who attacked a commonset of problems. New languages
`proliferated, offen initlated by government and buoyed by the needs of
`commercial industry. The Navy had sponsored Grace Hopper and others
`during the 1950s to develop automatic programming techniques that be-
`eame the first compilers. John Backus and a group at IBM developed
`FORTRAN, which was distributed to IBM users in 1957. A team led by
`fohn McCarthy at MIT (with zovernment support) began implementing
`LISP in 1958, and the language became widely used, particularly for arti-
`ficial inteligence programming, in the early 1960s. In 1959, the Pentagon
`began convening a group of computer experts from government,
`academia, and industry to define common. business languages for com-
`puters. The group published a specification in 1959, and by 1960 RCA and
`Remington Rand Univac had produced the first COBOL cornpilers. By
`the beginning of the 1960s, a number of computer languages, standard
`across numerous hardware platforms, were beginning to define program-
`ming as a task, as a profession, and as a challenging and legitimate subject
`of intellectual inquiry.
`
`Page 1008 of 1714
`
`Capyright G National Academyof Sciences. All rights reserved.
`
`Page 1008 of 1714
`
`

`

`Innovation in Information Technalagy
`http /Avww. nep.edu/catalog/10798. html
`
`60
`
`INNOVATION IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
`
`The Changing Federal Role
`
`(From pp. 98-107): The forces driving government support changed
`during the 1960s. The Cold War remained a paramount concern, but toit
`were added the difficult conflict in Vietnam, the Great Society programs,
`and the Apollo program, inaugurated by President Kennedy’s 1961 chai-
`lenge. Newpolitical goals, newtechnologies, and newmissions provoked
`changes in the federal agency population. Among these, two agencies
`becameparticularly important in computing: the new AdvancedResearch
`Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation.
`
`3
`a
`The Advanced Research Projects Agency
`
`The founding of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in
`1958, a direct outgrowth of the Sputnik scare, had immeasurable impact
`on computing and communications.ARPA, specifically charged with pre-
`venting technological surprises like Sputnik, began conducting long-
`range, high-risk research. It was originally conceived as the DOLY’s own
`space agency, reporting directly to the Secretary of Defense in order to
`avoid interservice rivalry. Space, like computing, did not seem to fit Into
`the existing military service structure. ARPA’s independent status riot
`only insulated it from established service interests but also tended to
`foster radical ideas and keep the agency tuned to basic research ques-
`tions: when the agency-supported work became too much like systems
`development, it ran the risk of treading on the territory of a specific ser-
`vice.
`ARPA’s status as the DOD space agencydid not last long. Soon after
`NASA’s creation in 1958, ARPA retained essentially no role as a space
`agency. ARPA instead focused its energies on ballistic missile defense,
`nuclear test detection, propellants, and materials. [t also established a
`critical organizational infrastructure and managementstyle: a small, high-
`qtiality managerial staff, supported by scientists and engineers on rota-
`tion from industry and academia, successfully employing existing DOD
`laboratories and contracting procedures (rather than creating its own. re-
`searchfacilities) to build solid programs in new, complex fields. ARPA
`also emerged as an agency extremely sensitive to the personality and
`vision of its director.
`ARPA’s decline as a space agency raised questions aboutits role and
`character. A newdirector, Jack Ruina, answered the questions in no un-
`certain terms by cementing the agency’s reputation as an elite, scientifi-
`cally respected institution devoted to basic, long-term research projects.
`Ruina, ARPA‘s first scientisi-directer, took office at the same time as
`Kermedy and McNamara in 1961, and brought a similar spirit to the
`
`Page 1009 of 1714
`
`Capyright G National Academyof Sciences. All rights reserved.
`
`Page 1009 of 1714
`
`

`

`Innovation in Information Technalagy
`http /Avww. nep.edu/catalog/10798. html
`
`EXCERPTS FROM EARLIER CSTB REPORTS
`
`6!
`
`agency. Ruina decentralized management at ARPA and began the traci-
`tion of relying heavily on independent office directors and program man-
`agers to run research programs. Ruina also valued scientific andtechnical
`merit above immediate relevance to the military. Ruina believed both of
`these characteristics—independence and intellectual quality—werecriti-
`cal to attracting the best people, both to ARPA as an organization andto
`ARPA-sponsored research. Interestingly,ARPA’s managerial success did
`not rely on innovative managerial techniques per se (such as the comput-
`erized project scheduling typical of the Navy’s Polaris project} but rather
`on. the creative use of existing mechanisms such as “no-year money,”
`unsolicited proposals, sole-source procurement, and multiyear forward
`funding.
`
`ARPA and Information Technology. From the point of view of comput-
`ing, the rmost important event at ARPAin the early 1960s, incleed! in all of
`ARPA’s history, was the establishment of the Information Processing
`Techniques Office,PTO, in 1962. The impetus for this move came from
`several directions, Including Kernedy’s call a year earlier for improve-
`ments in command-and-control systems to make them “more flexible,
`miore selective, more deliberate, better protected, and under ultimate ci-
`vilian authority at all times.” Computing as applied to command and
`control was the idealARPA program—it had no clearly established ser-
`vice affinity; it was “a new area withrelatively little established service
`interest ancl entailed far less constraint on ARPA’s freedom of action,”
`than more familiar technologies. Ruina established IPTOto be devoted
`not fo command and control but to the more fundamental problems in
`computing that would, eventually, contribute solutions.
`Consistent with his philosophyof strong, independent, andscientific
`office managers, Ruina appointed [-C.R. Licklider to head PTO. The
`Harvard-trained psychologist came to ARPA in October 1962, primarily
`to run its Command and Control Group. Licklider split that group into
`two discipline-oriented offices: Behavioral Sciences Office and IPTO.
`Licklider had had extensive exposure to the computer research of the time
`and had clearly detined his own vision of “rman-cormputer symbiosis,”
`which he had published in a landmark paper of 1960 by the same name.
`He saw human-computer interaction as the key, not only to command
`and control, but also to bringing together the then-clisparate techniques of
`electronic computing to form a unified science of computers as tools for
`augmenting human thought andcreativity. Licklider formed IPTOinthis
`image, working largely independently of any direction from Ruina, who
`spent the majority of his time on higher-profile and higher-funded missile
`defense issues. Licklider’s timing was opportune: the 1950s had produced
`a stable technology of digital computer hardware, and the big systems
`
`Page 1010 of 1714
`
`Capyright G National Academyof Sciences. All rights reserved.
`
`Page 1010 of 1714
`
`

`

`Innovation in Information Technalagy
`http /Avww. nep.edu/catalog/10798. html
`
`62
`
`INNOVATION IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
`
`projects had shownthat programming these machines was a difficult but
`interesting problem in its own right. Nowthe pertinent questions con-
`cerned howto use “this tremendous power... for other than purely
`numerical scientific calculations.” Licklider not only brought this vision
`to IPTO itself, but he also promoted it with missionaryzeal to the research
`community at large. Licklider’s and IPTO’s success derived in large part
`from their skills at “selling the visior” in addition to “buying the re-
`search.”
`Another remarkabie feature of IPTO, particularly during the 1960s,
`wasits ability to maintain the coherent vision over a long period of time;
`the office director was able to handpick his successor. Licklider chose
`ivan Sutherland, a dynamic young researcher he had encountered as a
`graduate student at MIT and the Lincoln Laboratory, to succeed him in
`1964. Sutherland carried on Licklider’s basic ideas and made his own
`impact by emphasizing computer graphics. Sutherland's own successor,
`Robert Taylor, carne in 1966 frorn a job as a program officer at NASA and
`recalled, “I became heartily subscribedto the Licklider vision of interac-
`tive computing.” While at IPTO, Taylor emphasized networking. The last
`IPTO director of the 1960s, Lawrence Roberts, came, ike Sutherland, from
`MIT and Lincoln Laboratory, where he had worked on the early transis-
`torized computers and had conducted ARPAresearch in both graphics
`and communications.
`During the 1960s, ARPA and [PTO had more effect on the science and
`technology of computing thanany other single government agency, some-
`times raising concern that the research agenda for computing was being
`directed by military needs. JPTO’s sheer size, $15 million in 1965, dwarfed
`other agencies such as ONR.Still, it is important to note,ONR and ARPA
`workedclosely together; ONR wouldoften let srnall contracts to research-
`ers andserve as a talent agent for ARPA, which wouldthen fund promis-
`ing projects at larger scale. ARPA combined the best features of existing
`military research support with a new, lean administrative structure and
`innovative management style to fund high-risk projects consistently. The
`agency had the freedom to administer large block grants as well as mul-
`tiple-year contracts, allowing it the buxury of a long-term vision to foster
`technologies, disciplines, and institutions. Further, the national defense
`motivation allowed IPTOto concentrate its resources on centers of scien-
`tific and engineering excellence (such as MIT, Carnegie Mellon Univer-
`sity, and Stanford University) without regard for geographical distribu-
`tion questions with which NSF had to be concerned. Such an approach
`helped to create university-basedresearch groups with the critical mass
`and stability of funding needed to create significant advances in particu-
`lar technical areas. But althoughit trained generations of young research-
`ers in those areas,ARPA‘s fundingstyledid little to help them pursue the
`
`Page 1011 of 1714
`
`Capyright G National Academyof Sciences. All rights reserved.
`
`Page 1011 of 1714
`
`

`

`Innovation in Information Technalagy
`http /Avww. nep.edu/catalog/10798. html
`
`EXCERPTS FROM EARLIER CSTB REPORTS
`
`63
`
`sare lines of work at other universities. As an indirect and possibly unin-
`tended consequence, the research approaches and tools and the generic
`technologies developed under ARPA’s patronage were disseminated
`more rapidly and widely, and so