1979

In May 1979 Larry Landweber, head of the department for information technology at the University of Wisconsin, invited representatives from six universities to come to Madison, in order to tell them about the installation of a new network, the Computer Science Research Network or in short CSNET. ARPA/DARPA couldn’t guarantee financial support for this project; however they sent Bob Kahn, an experienced man as consultant. The National Science Foundation (NSF), which had come up with the idea of an academic network already five years earlier, sent the head of their department for information technology, Kent Curtis.

After the meeting Landweber sat down with Peter Denning from Purdue, Dave Farber of the University of Delaware and Tony Hearn from RAND. Together they worked out a detailed concept of the new network all summer. Their concept envisioned a network which was open for computer scientists from universities, federal institutions and the industry. The used medium should be provided by a commercial provider such as TELENET. In November 1979 they turned in their final version at NSF.