[ih] Baran and arbitrary reliability from arbitrarily unreliable components

[adrian.j.hooke at jpl.nasa.gov (Adrian J. Hooke)]

At 10:27 PM 3/10/2009, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>   That is an important contribution, but not, to me, his most important. I
>would say that his most important single contribution was the concept of
>breaking a long "message" up into small, relatively fixed-size,
>self-describing segments (later named "packets").

As an aside, this is a concept which - totally independently - was 
being developed by some folk in the space communications community in 
the early 1970s (attached). "Block" telemetry subsequently morphed 
into "Packet Telemetry" and "Packet Telecommand" around 1976 and has 
become the underpinning of most current international space 
communications:  http://public.ccsds.org/publications/SLS.aspx.

These space communications protocols have now re-converged with 
Internet  history and provide a platform on which we are developing 
the "Interplanetary Internet": 
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/nov/HQ_08-298_Deep_space_internet.html

Adrian Hooke
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