Talk:Packet switch

Baran v. Davies

A comment on Baran and Davies as the originator of 'packet switching', and on the question of whether Davies knew of Baran's work: an abstract of Baran's '64 IEEE ToN paper had been published in IEEE Spectrum (circulation about 160,000 in those days) in August '64, so Baran's ideas had been circulated extremely widely years before Davies' work. Just because Davies didn't later remember seeing it, doesn't mean there wasn't a now-forgotten thread connecting them. (I am not at all saying that Davies deliberately hid any connection - I'm just trying to be realistic about the way human minds work.) E.g. maybe someone Davies knew had read of Baran's work, and mentioned it over lunch one day - and it went in one ear of Davies, and out the other - but it left a sub-conscious trace. We'll never know, sadly. All we can say, with certainty, is that Baran's work long preceded Davies, and was fairly widely publicized.

The topic is discussed at more length, including also Leonard Kleinrock's contribution, here and here. Jnc (talk) 04:25, 17 March 2024 (CET)