“US scientist Paul Baran, whose work in the 1960s helped pave the way for the internet, has died aged 84,” BBC News reports.
“Mr Baran thought up the idea of making communication networks resilient to attack or traffic surges by splitting the data sent over them into chunks,” The Beeb reports. “His pioneering work was carried out in connection with Cold War military research. It would later form the basis of the academic network Arpanet which eventually led to the internet.”
The Beeb reports, “Contributions from British scientist Donald Davies led to Mr Baran’s ideas being adapted into a technology known as packet switching. This cuts data up into small chunks that are then despatched around the network. ‘Paul wasn’t afraid to go in directions counter to what everyone else thought was the right or only thing to do,” Vinton Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet and a longtime friend of Baran, told the New York Times. Mr Baran died at home in Palo Alto, California from complications caused by lung cancer.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Scott J.” for the heads up.]