Smoke signals, shouting, semaphores — all these methods of communication are so passe now that we have networks, the technologies underlying such amenities as cell phones, wireless Web surfing, e-mail and cable TV.
A network can be simple, as the tin-can telephone demonstrates. Pull out a couple of cans or paper cups connected by a taut piece of string and kids can set up a system for talking across the back yard without raising their voices.
But complications have a way of intruding. Suppose the wind loosens a tree branch that falls on the string, or the little brat from next door cuts it with his new pocket knife, or the string is old and breaks under the strain.
If the kids had consulted with Atherton resident, engineer and noted inventor Paul Baran, they might have been able to keep talking. Not that he has a lot of time on his hands. The man who, according to the National Inventors Hall of Fame, “developed a fundamental concept behind today’s advanced communications networking systems” is now 80, but is still busy and at work on new ideas.
Mr. Baran talked with the Almanac at his home recently about his key invention, his life, and the culture of invention in the United States, but not about his new ideas. “Let’s just say that I’m involved with a couple of start-ups,” he says with a smile betraying a discretion that seems both casual and impregnable.
A handy trait, discretion. In combination with new and practical ideas, it can take you far. On May 5, Mr. Baran is expected in Akron, Ohio, to be inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame for his 1965 invention of digital packet switching.
In a nutshell, packet switching takes an e-mail attachment or Web page or phone conversation or cable TV show, disassembles the digital information into hundreds or thousands of “packets” — each with its own number and address — sends them out along various paths in a mesh-like network, then reassembles them at the other end in the right order, and so cleanly and quickly that we are never the wiser.
Packet switching is important because it dramatically lowers the cost of networks and the risk of network failure in cases of physical damage to its components, whether by lightning or terrorist attack.
A matter of safety
Necessity tends to breed invention. In the 1960s, with the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union at its height, the U.S. Department of Defense was earnestly seeking a way to toughen its command and control networks to survive a nuclear attack.These networks were vulnerable, Mr. Baran says, because a strike on one central office, or node, could isolate whole groups of other offices so that nothing got through — in the same way that a power strip providing electricity to a home computer, printer, fax machine and phone, if unplugged, would shut them all down at once.
“The obvious step was ‘Make (the network) like a fish net so there is no central node,’ ” he explains. In such a “distributed network,” the information might be blocked on one path but upon arriving at a “knot,” or node, in the net, it would have other paths to choose from.
“What could be simpler or more elegant? What could be harder to imagine,” says Paul Saffo, an admirer of Mr. Baran and a fellow at the Palo Alto-based Institute for the Future, which Mr. Baran co-founded.
The net-like structure and related concepts — the notion of packets that can find their own way home, the idea of formatting data to tolerate noise contamination — gelled for Mr. Baran in the early 1960s when he was with the nonprofit RAND Corporation in Los Angeles, a think tank and reservoir of ideas for the Pentagon.
He had about 20 different concepts in play, he says. “I didn’t invent everything. I just took whatever ideas were around and patched them together.”
A proof of his ideas arrived unexpectedly during the Northeast power blackout of 1965, when a regional radio and teletype network based on his concepts continued operating without interruption, he says.
The surprises kept coming. “There were a whole bunch of Eureka moments,” he says. “I was flabbergasted to find that, not only was it much more robust than anything around, it was very much cheaper” to build.
With multiple pathways for information flow, a distributed network has a natural tolerance for failure, allowing the use of cheaper components that cut costs to 1/50 of earlier networks, he says.
“That means you can now build this network out of (comparable) junk,” Mr. Baran says. “It used to be we had to gold-plate everything. This one works around failure. That’s why it’s become the way we build networks today.”
And it wasn’t just U.S. defense agencies that built them. Packet switching “was never patented,” he says. “We put it in the public domain. … It was made public early, intentionally. It was the right thing to do.”
The point, he says, was to spread the technology around in order to harden networks everywhere. In theory, Cold War defense officials would feel secure with robust, survivable networks, and a rumor of missiles being launched would be less likely to cause a panicked response from either side.
A little alchemy
Paul Baran came into the world in 1926 in Grodno, located on what at the time was the eastern border of Poland. His two older siblings, born in the same house, were, respectively, Lithuanian and Byelorussian. Conquests kept changing the nationality of the town in the early 20th century, he says.His family moved to the United States when he was 2, and he spent most of his childhood in Philadelphia, where his parents owned a grocery store. Fooling around with chemicals was an early interest after his sister bought him a chemistry set.
He made gunpowder and played with mercury, including chasing it around on a table top and packing it in dry ice to watch it freeze. There were other uses: “You can coat pennies with it and pass ’em for dimes,” he says, chuckling.
The federal Department of Health and Human Services warns against exposure to “high levels” of mercury, particularly as a vapor. Weren’t his high jinks akin to playing with at least a small fire? “Details,” he says with a firm smile, leaving little room to rain on his parade. “I’m not really done growing up yet,” he adds.
He went on to a career in electrical engineering, with a bachelor’s degree and an honorary doctorate from Drexel University, and a master’s degree from the University of California at Los Angeles. He and Evelyn, his wife of more than 50 years, have one son and three grandchildren.
His affiliations include fellowships in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Marconi Society, and he is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
With some 35 patents to his name, most related to packet switching, does the label “inventor” fit? “The idea of being called an inventor is something I never thought of,” he says. “If I filled in an application form, I would never say ‘inventor.’ I’m an engineer.”
He has started seven companies, five of which went public, says collaborator and Portola Valley resident Stephen Millard. Technologies based on his inventions include high-speed Internet access (DSL), wireless networking, and Internet phone service, Mr. Millard says.
“He has a unique ability to see marketing opportunities that don’t (materialize) for five years,” he says. “There’s sheer intellect and then there’s intellect that makes things happen. … That man’s the father of the communications age.”
Asked if his later inventions measured up to his original packet switching idea, Mr. Baran replies: “No, that a pretty hard one to beat. After that, it’s all down hill.”
Mr. Saffo of the Institute for the Future describes Mr. Baran as “delightful,” adding that he is “refreshingly self-effacing. He is so generous in sharing credit with others, almost to a fault.
“He is old-school Silicon Valley, the ‘Show no chrome’ generation,” Mr. Saffo adds. “He’s kind of the polar opposite of (Oracle Corp. founder) Larry Ellison. I’ll bet you he (Baran) flies coach.
“We need more of that in the Valley. I’m grateful for his many innovations, but I admire him most for his outlook on life, and it’s something that the rest of us should strive to emulate.”
A culture of invention?
Few American kids are making their own gunpowder or trying to fool candy store clerks with fake dimes these days. They have too many other priorities: sports, community service, music lessons, ski week, SAT preparation.Are there inventors among them to help the United States maintain its edge? Mr. Baran says he is not worried, but adds: “Unless you get kids into science between the sixth and eighth grades, you lose them forever. There’s only a short window that you can get kids interested in science.
“You know if they become nerds or not,” he says. “I think (nerd) is a badly maligned name. It’s a hell of a lot more fun than people realize, speaking as a nerd, of course.”
Nerds tend to find each other, he adds, and Silicon Valley is an ideal meeting ground. “This is an area of lots and lots of stuff going on, a lot of fun people, bright people, and having a lot of fun.”
Reading about science, particularly cosmology, is one way he has fun, despite the impenetrability of such concepts as dark matter.
What about string theory as an explanation for the universe? “String theory is way out there. … It’s not real enough for me to believe, but I’ve tried.”
INFORMATION
Go to www.invent.org to learn more about the National Inventors Hall of Fame. This site has information on the Camp Invention summer program for kids and the Modern Marvels Invent Now Challenge for inventors of all ages, including lesson plans for elementary, middle and high schools.
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