Further memories of my time at BBN

Of course, I was involved in the initial development and then early
expansion of the ARPANET in 1969 and 1970.  During this period I worked
closely with Frank Heart, Bob Kahn, Bernie Cosell, Will Crowther,
Severo Ornstein, Ben Barker and others. In September 1970, Sara, Luke
and I moved to Oslo, Norway, where I worked for Norsk Data Elektronikk
for a year. In September 1971 we returned to BBN and I rejoined Frank
Heart's division and the ARPANET team.

I did a little packet-switching marketing work with Hawley Rising, and
I began to get reinvolved with the software side of the ARPANET. After
a bit, Frank and Will Crowther asked me to become responsible for the
ARPANET software activities.  In the years that followed, I began to
get involved in the yearly division planning relating to the networking
activities and in time Frank made me assistant division director, along
with Paul Castleman.  A few years later, after Ben Barker had gotten
the opportunity to "do his own thing" with BBN Computer Corporation,
John McQuillan and I wanted to do "our own thing" and Levy and LaVigna
supported us in 1978 in starting BBN Information Management Corporation
(BBN IMC), where we developed InfoMail. Two years later, in 1980,
LaVigna and I transferred to BBNCC, and a couple of years after that I
was made general manager of BBN Laboratories, which in turn became BBN
Systems and Technologies Corporation of which I was president.  While
president of BBN S&T, I helped combine the operational networking part
of BBN S&T (Bressler's part) into BBN CC and helped start BBN Software
Products and the BBN parallel processing company.  In 1990 I left BBN
S&T and became chief quality officer of BBN, and in 1992 I became EVP
and GM of BBNCC with Barker as CEO. In 1994, Barker spun out the
LightStream part of BBNCC, and I helped fold the rest back into BBN
S&T.  In December 1994 Conrades fired me, and I left at the beginning
of 1995.

In the years between 1971 when I returned from Norway and 1978 when I
left Frank's division to start BBN IMC, I remember lots of extra
curricular activities in the division, especially before about 1975
when we moved from the 20 Moulton Street building to the new 10 Moulton
Street building that had replaced the Superior Laundry processing
plant.  (Of course, while the new 10 Moulton Street building was being
built, watching its construction was an important activity.  The six
concrete floors were all poured at ground level and the jacked into the
air on the I-beams that provided the vertical strength of the building.
The jacks on each I-beam were hydraulically run with lots of hoses
running from a central pumping station.  The individual jacks on each
I-beam had to be carefully controlled so they lifted the concrete slabs
uniformly.  This hydraulic "control system" was fascinating to us
"computer control" people.)

Early on in this period, a bunch of us were playing postal chess. Maybe
the Fisher-Spasky match in Iceland stimulated us.  I remember at least
Will Crowther, Bernie Cosell and me playing, and I am sure there were
others.  We each had several stiff paper chess boards, three-hole
punched to go in a notebook, with flat plastic pieces that slipped into
slots in the squares of the board.  We were playing at different levels
in the national postal chess organization and a lot of time was spent
looking at the games at work.  Frank Frasier, on the other hand, was
dedicating himself to gaining strength as an over-the-board tournament.
player.  As I remember, this was an era when the best computer chess
program was still Greenblat's MacHack from MIT, and it ran on our
PDP-10.

I'm not sure of the other of the rest of the activities, but another
was juggling.  I picked up a copy of Carlo's Juggling Book in a book
store in Coos Bay, OR, where my mother lived.  I taught myself a three
ball cascade at home over the bed (Sara would get mad when I practiced
with her in the bed).  Soon I showed off my minimal talent to Crowther,
Eric Roberts, etc., at BBN.  Eric already knew how to do basic three
ball juggling.  Soon lots of BBN people were buying three lacrosse
balls and learning to juggle, do simple ball passing.  As time went on,
various of us began going to the Sunday afternoon sessions of the MIT
Juggling Club where we learned to do club passing [see
www.walden-family.com/dave/archive/net-history/fortune-juggling.jpg,
from the December 17, 1979 issue of Fortune magazine, page 26; in the
photo the left most person facing the camera and the person second from
the right are BBNers]. Shortly, this BBN interest in juggling spread
from BBN into the greater ARPANET community; I remember one visit to at
meeting at Ft. Meade where Vint Cerf (probably at ARPA then) and I both
had our juggling balls in our brief cases. Don and Lana Reed were local
street performer jugglers who we all knew and admired from their
performances in Harvard Square. They were the current editors of the
International Jugglers Association (IJA) Newsletter.  Seeing their hand
written address labels on the Newsletter, I put the IJA address list on
line on a BBN computer and provided Don and Lana with adhesive address
labels for the rest of their tenure as Newsletter editors. At my first
IJA annual convention in Los Angeles, I got elected IJA Newsletter
editor (I think I was the only volunteer to take over from Don and
Lana), and for the next two years the Newsletter was composed on BBN
computers and printed by the BBN print shop which was allowed to take
outside paid work.  For two exciting weeks, Lana happened to appear the
temporary-agency supplied replacement for my secretary who was on
vacation.  A couple of times we managed to get her to join us for lunch
hour juggling in the multi-purpose room on the sixth floor of 10
Moulton Street.  At the IJA convention in Eugene, OR, Eric Roberts
suggested the next convention be held in Massachusettes, but somewhere
else was chosen. However, the following year, Eric along with John
Robinson (JR to everyone who knows him) became convention chairmen for
the IJA convention held at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA.  For quite
a few years after this convention, JR maintained the IJA address, which
he had converted into a more sophisticated form for easier use, on BBN
computers.  For five years or more, the IJA was sort of a BBN
sponsored, given how much extra curricular (and perhaps some work) time
of BBNers went into it.

The Cave Research Foundation was another activity that had this sort of
BBN "sponsorship."  Will and Pat Crowther were active in exploring and
mapping the extent of Mamouth Cave in Tennessee.  Will entered all the
mapping data into one BBN's computers where he wrote a program to
process it and plot a 3D perspective image of it.  One or two other
BBNers helped Will with this project -- one of whom was JR, I think.

I don't know which came first to BBN, car rallies or map rallies.  In
any case, Bernie and Lynn Cosell (and perhaps other BBNers) got
involved in car rallies, where they tried to follow complex directions
and pass by checkpoints at precise times.  Within the corridors of BBN,
a desktop version of car rallies was played annually for a number of
years.  Some group provide a complex set of puzzle-like directions and
a specific road atlas of the U.S., and participants had several weeks
to try to solve the directions and find the correct course in the
atlas.  A number of BBNers participated in this annual competition, and
some years it seemed like it was the main business of the division for
the weeks before its ending deadline.  One of the most fun rally-like
events was the car rally to the division annual picnic.  We all met at
the fast food stop on Rt. 128 near the Rt. 2A overpass, got our
directions, and then tried to follow them past the various required
checkpoints at the required times until we found our way to Bob Brooks'
house and the picnic.  Of course, almost all of us went by car, but two
or three people (e.g., Joel Levin) did at least some of the rally on
horseback.

Another activity consuming many people in the division for a period of
time was learning to fly air planes.  Some of the people involved in
this included Bernie Cosell, Tony Michel, and Dave Katsuki, I think.
There was a lot of talk about buying airplanes, and I think at least
one jointly purchased or leased plane.  I remember Bernie getting
enough licenses to fly most of the way across the country.

I also remember the fencing phase, when several people took fencing
lessons (Dave Katsuki was one, as I remember) and there was a lot of
talk in the halls of fencing and there was a tumbling phase, when Steve
Butterfield led Will Crowther and others to gymnastics class and then
they practiced at lunch hour on the grass outside our office windows,
trying to to front flips and the like.

Then there was the Rubik's Cube fad, which consumed BBN just like it
consumed the rest of the world.  For months there was near constant
work solving Rubik's Cube.  As with so many things, Bernie Cosell was
in the center of this extra curricular activity (or not so extra
curricular) and probably did the most group theory work relating to
Rubik's Cube.

Speaking of Bernie, one of my favorite BBN hacks was his billiards
program, which showed the balls bouncing around a billiards table in
what I believe were the correct paths based on the physics of the game.
As I remember, he spent some time studying a book on the game by some
famous 1800s French mathematician.

It was a bit later, when the first bitmap display had been built at
BBN, that PacMan occupied a lot of people's time up and down the halls
of the company.

Of course, not everything happened within BBN.  Some of what I think of
as BBN activities happened at home.  For instance, for a period,
several couples got together periodically at the home of one of the
couples to cook Chinese dinner, with each couple cooking a different
dish.  In addition to us, I remember the Katsukis, Kraleys, Rettbergs,
and Bresslers participating in this events.

I am sure there were many other "home events" involving BBNers.
However, the enthusiasm about these activities never seemed to just
stay at home.  News of what was going on was broadcast up and down the
halls of BBN.  At one point Lynn Cosell got involved in weaving.  A
while later, we began to hear of the involvement of Bernie and Lynn and
a couple of other people in competitive weaving, where a four person
team apparently designs a weaving piece, prepares the wool, and weaves
the piece.  It was never clear to me whether the competitive event
involved actually shearing a sheep.  I'm sure that this is partly what
led to Bernie and Lynn leaving BBN and buying a sheep farm in Virgina
here they are today.

Another home event which consumed a bunch of us was Dungeons and
Dragons.  I was visiting Eric Roberts at his Harvard dorm on th
Ratcliff campus one night and participated with him a some women
friends of his in a D&D game.  This was the first I have ever heard of
the game.  The next morning, I went into BBN raving to Crowther,
Cosell, and others about what a wonderful game that was. Shortly we
decided we needed out own D&D game, with Eric as dungeon master. That
game went on for a year or two, held in my living room in Arlington for
much of the time.  Other BBNers involved were Bernie and Lynn Cosell,
Mike Kraley, Steve Butterfield, Will Crowther, Bob Bressler, Martin
Haeberli, Bill Mann, and John Robinson, and Dave Lebling of MIT. This
game was pretty much original from Eric -- no store bought stuff. At
the end of the game Eric composed (in MRUNOFF on BBN's computer) a
comprehensive description of "The Mirkwood Tales."  I always thought
this was quintessential BBN extra curricular activity: not only did it
consume untold hours of time of lots of BBN people, it also included a
nearly 100 page "final report."  However, that was not the end of this
D&D game. Crowther, with his experience with caving and with this D&D
game, programmed up a version of D&D in Fortran to entertain his two
kids and called it Adventure. Because it was in Fortran, this could
spread around the Internet and be improved by others.  In any case it
was the first computer adventure game.  In time Lebling and others at
MIT took the idea and created (the at first freely distributed and
eventually best selling) Zork, which itself consumed vast amounts of
time of BBN people, including the time of several participants in our
D&D game that inspired Adventure and Zork.

Of course, I mostly saw the extra curricular activities in my own
division.  I was less in touch with these sorts of activities in the
other computer division or in the acoustics divisions.  A lot of the
musical happenings of BBN appeared to come out of the other division,
e.g., I vaguely remember a BBN Chorus and the BBN piano is well known
(see www.walden-family.com/dave/archive/net-history/TM1296.pdf).  The
most well known (to me) "hacks" in the acoustics division were Ed
Kerwin's annual Sturdleigh memos (parody reports of BBN's annual
meeting) and Ed's Mr. Small (who for years had a completely outfitted
miniature desk in one of the halls of BBN's 70 Fawcett Street
building).

What's truly amazing to me is how much real work we got done and
technical progress we made given how much of our time was spent on
other interests.  Of course, just like lots of play was done at work,
lots of work was done at home (this was one of the benefits of having
remote access early on to time-shared interactive computers.  I've
always said when people asked me about work and non-work activities, "I
could never tell the difference."