Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet

Twenty five years ago, it didn't exist. Today, twenty million people worldwide are surfing the Net.Where Wizards Stay Up Lateis the exciting story of the pioneers responsible for creating the most talked about, most influential, and most far-reaching communications breakthrough since the invention of the telephone.

In the 1960's, when computers where regarded as mere giant calculators, J.C.R. Licklider at MIT saw them as the ultimate communications devices. With Defense Department more >>

Twenty five years ago, it didn't exist. Today, twenty million people worldwide are surfing the Net.Where Wizards Stay Up Lateis the exciting story of the pioneers responsible for creating the most talked about, most influential, and most far-reaching communications breakthrough since the invention of the telephone.

In the 1960's, when computers where regarded as mere giant calculators, J.C.R. Licklider at MIT saw them as the ultimate communications devices. With Defense Department funds, he and a band of visionary computer whizzes began work on a nationwide, interlocking network of computers. Taking readers behind the scenes,Where Wizards Stay Up Latecaptures the hard work, genius, and happy accidents of their daring, stunningly successful venture.

David Plotnikoff

San Jose Mercury News

The book, almost certainly destined to be the definitive work on the birth and early years of the Internet, is sweeping in scope....Whoever chooses to write the next chapter in the saga...has a tough act to follow.

Daniel Akst

Los Angeles Times

Important...meticulous...admirably straightforward.

Lars Eighner

The Texas Observer

In all the dreck and dross of Internet books, here is a brilliant gem...remarkably well written.

Mark Baechtel

The Washington Post

Excellent...makes for crackling entertainment...reawakens a sense of wonder in readers jaded by too much Internet hype.

Richard Bernstein

The New York Times Book Review

If you always wanted to know who put the 'at' sign in your E-mail address, thenWhere Wizards Stay Up Lateis the book for you.

From Chapter One

February, 1966

Bob Taylor usually drove to work, thirty minutes through the rolling countryside northeast of Washington, over the Potomac River to the Pentagon. There, in the morning, he'd pull into one of the vast parking lots and try to put his most-prized possession, a BMW 503, someplace he could remember. There were few if any security checkpoints at the entrances to the Pentagon in 1966. Taylor breezed in wearing his usual attire: sport coat, tie, button-down short-sleeve shirt, and slacks. Thirty thousand other people swarmed through the concourse level daily, in uniform and mufti alike, past the shops and up into the warrens of the enormous building.

Taylor's office was on the third floor, the most prestigious level in the Pentagon, near the offices of the secretary of defense and the director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). The offices of the highest-ranking officials in the Pentagon were in the outer, or E-ring. Their suites had views of the river and national monuments. Taylor's boss, Charles Herzfeld, the head of ARPA, was among those with a view, in room 3E160. The ARPA director rated the highest symbols of power meted out by the Department of Defense (DOD), right down to the official flags beside his desk. Taylor was director of the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), just a corridor away, an unusually independent section of ARPA charged with supporting the nation's most advanced computer research-and-development projects.

The IPTO director's suite, where Taylor hung his coat from 1965 to 1969, was located in the D-ring. What his office lacked in a view was compensated for by its comfort and size. It was a plushly carpeted and richly furnished room with a big desk, a heavy oak conference table, glass-fronted bookcases, comfortable leather chairs, and all the other trappings of rank, which the Pentagon carefully measured out even down to the quality of the ashtrays. (Traveling on military business, Taylor carried the rank of one-star general.) On one wall of his office was a large map of the world; a framed temple rubbing from Thailand hung prominently on another.

Inside the suite, beside Taylor's office, was another door leading to a small space referred to as the terminal room. There, side by side, sat three c << less