Larry Roberts
Networks
- When Roberts worked at Lincoln Lab, Bob Taylor wanted him to work for ARPA as head of his new network project, but he received several letters of refusal.
- Taylor knew that it was difficult, if not impossible, to find another capable candidate for this job, so he asked his boss Charlie Herzfeld to help him.
- Herzfeld called the boss of Lincoln Lab and told him to talk with Roberts, and that it would be the best for the Labs and Roberts if he changed to ARPA (more than 50 percent of the Labs’ budget was funded by ARPA).
- Two weeks later Roberts took up his new job in the Pentagon.
- Prior to his first day of work he developed a rudimental plan of the new computer network.
- It took only a couple of weeks until he knew all routes in the Pentagon – one of the most spacious buildings in the world – by heart.
- He stopped the time of different routes to his destinations to figure out the fastest routes.
- After some time the term “Larry’s route” was established by his colleagues as synonym for the quickest route between any two places in the Pentagon.
- He took a speed-reading class and improved his skills until he reached a pace of 30.000 words a minute.
- According to a friend he could read a pocket book in ten minutes and he could have been even faster, if turning the pages didn’t take so much time.
- He is often called the “father of the ARPANET”.
Larry Roberts
born in 1937 in Connecticut
ARPA, Telenet, DHL, NetExpress, ATM Systems, Packetcom, Caspian Networks
