Keith Uncapher, 80, Networking Pioneer, Dies

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Anthony Watson <atrigueiro () yahoo com>

Keith Uncapher, 80, Networking Pioneer, Dies
By KATIE HAFNER

Keith W. Uncapher, an engineer who oversaw seminal work in computer
networking, especially on the underpinnings of what became the Internet,
died last Thursday. He was 80 and lived in the Playa del Rey district of Los
Angeles. The cause was a heart attack he suffered while flying from
Washington to Los Angeles, a son, William B. Uncapher, said.
 <http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&amp;page=www.nytim
es.com/yr/mo/day/obituaries&amp;pos=Middle&amp;camp=blank-obituaries-right3m
iddle&amp;ad=critics160&amp;goto=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Enytimes%2Ecom%2Fcriticsc
hoice%2Findex2%2Ehtml>
 




In 1950, Mr. Uncapher joined the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif.,
and eventually became director of its computer science division. A skilled
hands-on engineer, Mr. Uncapher had a reputation for being the only one able
to make RAND's Johnniac, an early computer named for John von Neumann, work
reliably. 

But his greatest strengths in his 22 years at RAND were in his skill as a
manager, especially in recruiting talented people, said David Farber, a
visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University who left Bell Laboratories
in 1967 to work for Mr. Uncapher at RAND.

It was in the early 1960's that the fundamentals for bundling and
transmitting data, or packet switching, were first laid out by Paul Baran,
an engineer who worked for Mr. Uncapher. Packet switching breaks data into
discrete bundles that are then sent along various paths around a network and
reassembled at their destination.

 

remainder of story :

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/16/obituaries/16UNCA.html?todaysheadlines


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