Elizabeth J. Feinler

Last updated
Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler
ElizabethFeinler-2011.jpg
Jake Feinler, c.2011
Born
Elizabeth Jocelyn Feinler

(1931-03-02) March 2, 1931 (age 93) [1]
Wheeling, West Virginia, U.S.
Nationality
  • American
Alma mater West Liberty State College and Purdue University
Known forRunning the original ARPANET NIC at SRI
Scientific career
Fields Computer science
Institutions SRI, NASA Ames, Computer History Museum

Elizabeth Jocelyn "Jake" Feinler (born March 2, 1931) is an American information scientist. From 1972 until 1989 she was director of the Network Information Systems Center at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI International). Her group operated the Network Information Center (NIC) for the ARPANET as it evolved into the Defense Data Network (DDN) and the Internet. [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Feinler was born on March 2, 1931, in Wheeling, West Virginia, where she also grew up. [1] [2] In 1954, she received an undergraduate degree from West Liberty State College, the first from her family to attend college.

Career

Early career

Feinler was working toward a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Purdue University when she decided to earn some money by working for a year or two before starting on her thesis. Working at the Chemical Abstracts Service in Columbus, Ohio, she served as an assistant editor on a huge project to index the world's chemical compounds. There she became intrigued with the challenges of creating such large data compilations and never returned to biochemistry. Instead, in 1960, she relocated to California and joined the Information Research Department at the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) where she worked to develop the Handbook of Psychopharmacology and the Chemical Process Economics Handbook. [3]

ARPANET and NIC

Feinler was leading the Literature Research section of SRI's library when, in 1972, Doug Engelbart recruited her to join his Augmentation Research Center (ARC), which was sponsored by the Information Processing Techniques Office of the US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA). Her first task was to write a Resource Handbook for the first demonstration of the ARPANET at the International Computer Communication Conference. By 1974 she was the principal investigator to help plan and run the new Network Information Center (NIC) for the ARPANET. [4] [5]

The NIC provided reference service to users (initially over the phone and by physical mail), maintained and published a directory of people (the "white pages"), a resource handbook (the "yellow pages", a list of services) and the protocol handbook. After the Network Operations Center at Bolt, Beranek and Newman brought new hosts onto the network, the NIC registered names, provided access control for terminals, audit trail and billing information, and distributed Request for Comments (RFCs). [6] Feinler, working with Steve Crocker, Jon Postel, Joyce Reynolds and other members of the Network Working Group (NWG), developed RFCs into the official set of technical notes for the ARPANET and later the Internet. The NIC provided the first links to on-line documents using the NLS Journal system developed at ARC. [4] Engelbart continued leading-edge research in the ARC, while the NIC provided a service to all network users. This led to establishing the NIC as a separate project with Feinler as manager. [7]

The NWG and Feinler's team defined a simple text file format for host names in 1974, [8] and revised the format several times as the networks evolved. [9] [10] The host table itself was continuously updated on almost a daily basis. In 1975, the Defense Communication Agency (DCA) took operational control and support, and over time split the ARPANET into research and military networks. DCA used the name Defense Data Network to refer to the combination, and the NIC served as its information center. When e-mail and the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) became available around 1976, the NIC used them to deliver information to users via the network. [4] In 1977, Postel moved to the Information Sciences Institute, and the RFC editor and number assignment functions moved with him, while the NIC stayed at SRI. By 1979, Feinler and her group were working on ways to scale up the name service. [11] In 1982, an Internet protocol was defined by Ken Harrenstien and Vic White in her group to access the online directory of people, called Whois. [12] As the Internet expanded, the Domain Name System was designed to handle the growth by delegating naming authority to distributed name servers. Her group became the overall naming authority of the Internet, developing and managing the name registries of the top-level domains of .mil, .gov, .edu, .org, and .com. [13] Even the names of the top-level domains, based on generic categories such as .com were suggestions of the NIC team, approved by the Internet developer community.

Later career

After Feinler left SRI, in 1989, she worked as a network requirements manager and helped develop guidelines for managing the NASA Science Internet (NSI) NIC at the NASA Ames Research Center. Feinler donated an extensive collection of early Internet papers to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, and after she retired from NASA in 1996 worked as a volunteer at the museum to organize the material. [3] She published a history of the NIC in 2010. [14] In 2012, Feinler was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame by the Internet Society. [15] In July, 2013 she received [16] the Jonathan B. Postel Service Award "for her contributions to the early development and administration of the Internet through her leadership of the Network Information Center (NIC) for the ARPANET".

Retirement

At the turn of the 21st century, Feinler was inducted into the SRI Alumni Hall of Fame. In retirement she consistently volunteers at the Computer History Museum located in Mountain View, California. Feinler describes her role at CHM:

"Over the years, while running the Network Information Center (NIC) on the Internet, I collected close to 1500 shelf feet of papers pertaining to the Internet. Currently I am working as a volunteer at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View to organize these papers. I am also writing a Finding Aid to assist scholars who may want to use the collection. It will describe the contents, significance, and organization scheme of the collection. While most in Silicon Valley are charging ahead, I can safely say I am going backwards. :-) If you haven't been to the museum, check it out. It has a great collection of artifacts, exhibits and documents. In May the Babbage Machine exhibit opens. Who can resist a computer with 8,000 mechanical moving parts!!!!" [7]

Nickname

Feinler explains how she got her nickname, "Jake":

When I was born, double names were popular. My real name is Elizabeth Jocelyn Feinler, and my family was going to call me Betty Jo to match my sister’s name, Mary Lou. Only two at the time, my sister’s version of Betty Jo sounded like Baby Jake. I always say, Thank goodness they dropped the "Baby". [3]

In Monster High: The Movie , Frankie Stein says they have part of the brain of "some lady named Liz who apparently invented the internet."

Related Research Articles

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the associated entities. Most prominently, it translates readily memorized domain names to the numerical IP addresses needed for locating and identifying computer services and devices with the underlying network protocols. The Domain Name System has been an essential component of the functionality of the Internet since 1985.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the Internet</span>

The history of the Internet has its origin in the efforts of scientists and engineers to build and interconnect computer networks. The Internet Protocol Suite, the set of rules used to communicate between networks and devices on the Internet, arose from research and development in the United States and involved international collaboration, particularly with researchers in the United Kingdom and France.

The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), and the Internet Protocol (IP). Early versions of this networking model were known as the Department of Defense (DoD) model because the research and development were funded by the United States Department of Defense through DARPA.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jon Postel</span> American computer scientist (1943–1998)

Jonathan Bruce Postel was an American computer scientist who made many significant contributions to the development of the Internet, particularly with respect to standards. He is known principally for being the Editor of the Request for Comment (RFC) document series, for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), and for administering the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) until his death.

A Request for Comments (RFC) is a publication in a series from the principal technical development and standards-setting bodies for the Internet, most prominently the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). An RFC is authored by individuals or groups of engineers and computer scientists in the form of a memorandum describing methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the working of the Internet and Internet-connected systems. It is submitted either for peer review or to convey new concepts, information, or, occasionally, engineering humor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steve Crocker</span> 20th and 21st-century Internet pioneer

Stephen D. Crocker is an Internet pioneer. In 1969, he created the ARPA "Networking Working Group" and the Request for Comments series. He served as chair of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from 2011 through 2017.

A datagram is a basic transfer unit associated with a packet-switched network. Datagrams are typically structured in header and payload sections. Datagrams provide a connectionless communication service across a packet-switched network. The delivery, arrival time, and order of arrival of datagrams need not be guaranteed by the network.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeff Rulifson</span> American computer scientist

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InterNIC, known as the Network Information Center (NIC) until 1993, was the organization primarily responsible for Domain Name System (DNS) domain name allocations and X.500 directory services. From its inception in 1972 until October 1, 1991, it was run by the Stanford Research Institute, now known as SRI International, and led by Jake Feinler. From October 1991 until September 18, 1998, it was run by Network Solutions. Thereafter, the responsibility was assumed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ARPANET</span> Early packet switching network (1969–1990), one of the first to implement TCP/IP

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The Network Control Protocol (NCP) was a communication protocol for a computer network in the 1970s and early 1980s. It provided the transport layer of the protocol stack running on host computers of the ARPANET, the predecessor to the modern Internet.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bob Braden</span> American computer scientist (1934–2018)

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WHOIS is a query and response protocol that is used for querying databases that store an Internet resource's registered users or assignees. These resources include domain names, IP address blocks and autonomous systems, but it is also used for a wider range of other information. The protocol stores and delivers database content in a human-readable format. The current iteration of the WHOIS protocol was drafted by the Internet Society, and is documented in RFC 3912.

In computer networking, a port or port number is a number assigned to uniquely identify a connection endpoint and to direct data to a specific service. At the software level, within an operating system, a port is a logical construct that identifies a specific process or a type of network service. A port at the software level is identified for each transport protocol and address combination by the port number assigned to it. The most common transport protocols that use port numbers are the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the User Datagram Protocol (UDP); those port numbers are 16-bit unsigned numbers.

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References

  1. 1 2 Interviewed by Janet Abbate (July 8, 2002). "Oral-History:Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler". Interview # 597. IEEE History Center, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. Retrieved 2012-09-01.
  2. 1 2 Weber, Marc (10 September 2009). Feinler, Elizabeth oral history. Oral histories online. Vol. 102702199. Mountain View, CA: Computer History Museum. X5378.2009. Retrieved September 29, 2013.
  3. 1 2 3 Eleanor Dickman (May 2001). "Internet History Buff: Jake Feinler" (PDF). Focus on People section in CORE 2.2. Computer Museum History Center, Moffett Field, California. p. 14. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 1, 2012. Retrieved April 8, 2011.
  4. 1 2 3 "Elizabeth J. Feinler". SRI Alumni Hall of Fame. 2000. Archived from the original on 2022-02-10. Retrieved 2020-02-17.
  5. ↑ "Elizabeth (Jake) Feinler". Stanford MouseSite. Stanford University . Retrieved 2012-07-29.
  6. ↑ Crocker, Steve (April 1969). Documentation Conventions. IETF. doi: 10.17487/RFC0003 . RFC 3.
  7. 1 2 Thierry Bardini; Michael Friedewald (2002). Chronicle of the Death of a Laboratory: Douglas Engelbart and the Failure of the Knowledge Workshop (PDF). History of Technology. Vol. 23. pp. 192–212. ISBN   978-0-8264-5616-8.
  8. ↑ Kudlick, M.D. (January 10, 1974). Host names on-line. IETF. doi: 10.17487/RFC0608 . RFC 608.
  9. ↑ Feinler, Elizabeth; Harrenstien, Ken; Su, Zaw-Sing; White, Vic (1 March 1982). DoD Internet Host Table Specification. IETF. doi: 10.17487/RFC0810 . RFC 810.
  10. ↑ Harrenstien, K.; Stahl, M.; Feinler, E. (October 1985). DoD Internet Host Table Specification. IETF. doi: 10.17487/RFC0952 . RFC 952.
  11. ↑ Pickens, John R.; Feinler, Elizabeth J.; Mathis, James E. (July 1979). The NIC Name Server—A Datagram Based Information Utility. IETF. doi: 10.17487/RFC0756 . RFC 756. Also published in the proceedings of the Fourth Berkeley Conference on Distributed Data Management and Computer Networks.
  12. ↑ Harrenstien, Ken; White, Vic (1 March 1982). NICNAME/WHOIS. IETF. doi: 10.17487/RFC0812 . RFC 812.
  13. ↑ Postel, J.; Reynolds, J. (October 1984). Domain Requirements. IETF. doi: 10.17487/RFC0920 . RFC 920.
  14. ↑ Elizabeth Feinler (July–September 2010). "The Network Information Center and its Archives". Annals of the History of Computing. 32 (3): 83–89. doi:10.1109/MAHC.2010.54. S2CID   206443021.
  15. ↑ 2012 Inductees Archived 2012-12-13 at the Wayback Machine , Internet Hall of Fame website. Last accessed April 24, 2012
  16. ↑ "Elizabeth Feinler Receives 2013 Jonathan B. Postel Service Award - Internet Society". internetsociety.org.
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