David Walden

American computer scientist (1942–2022)
Sara Elizabeth Cowles
​
​
(m. 1966)​

David Corydon Walden (June 7, 1942 – April 27, 2022) was an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer who contributed to the engineering development of the ARPANET, a precursor of the modern Internet. He specifically contributed to the Interface Message Processor, which was the packet switching node for the ARPANET. Walden was a contributor to IEEE Computer Society's Annals of the History of Computing and was a member of the TeX Users Group.

Early life and education

Walden was born on June 7, 1942, to Velva (née Diede) and Clarence Walden in Longview, Washington. His mother was an elementary school teacher while his father was a high school teacher. His family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when he was aged four. He started out at University of California, Berkeley, before dropping out with poor grades and subsequently moving to San Francisco State University, where he obtained a degree in Mathematics. While at San Francisco State University, he took a course in numerical analysis, a field of mathematics, that triggered his interest in computers, and he worked on an IBM 1620 computer, the university's only computer.[1][2][3]

Career

IMP team in 1969 (left to right): Truett Thatch, Bill Bartell (Honeywell), Dave Walden, Jim Geisman, Robert Kahn, Frank Heart, Ben Barker, Marty Thorpe, Will Crowther, and Severo Ornstein Not pictured: Bernie Cosell

Walden started his career working as a programmer at the space communications division of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory.[1] He moved to join Bolt Beranek & Newman (BBN) in 1967. It was here that he was part of the seven-member engineering team that developed the packet switching technology that powered the ARPANET, one of the first general purpose computer networks that was a precursor of the modern internet. During his time at BBN, the group of engineers developed the Interface Message Processor, that formed the packet switching basis for the network, developed the hardware, wrote the software, and even acted as the Network Operations Center for the network.[4] Specifically, Walden's efforts focused on developing the packet switching and routing software for the IMP.[5]

He developed what became known as the "Walden message switching protocol",[6][7][8] and was acknowledged by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn in their seminal 1974 paper on internetworking, A Protocol For Packet Network Intercommunication.[9]

Walden briefly moved to Norway to work at Norsk Data Elektronikk in Oslo, developing the LFK network, a Norwegian packet switching network, between 1970 and 1971, before returning to the United States to continue working with BBN.[4] Walden was the system architect and Norsk Data's project manager in building out this network.[10][11]

Toward the latter part of his career, Walden focused on management research and wrote extensively on the topic.[3] He was also a member of the TeX Users Group and contributed to content related to digital typesetting and publishing.[4][12] He had also served as the group's director and treasurer.[13] Walden received a honorary doctorate from the San Francisco State University in 2014, for his contributions to the ARPANET.[1] Walden was the co-founder of Center for Quality of Management and a contributor to IEEE Computer Society's Annals of the History of Computing and a member of its History Committee.[3]

Personal life

Walden married Sara Elizabeth Cowles, an educational administrator, in 1966. The couple had a son. Walden died of mantle cell lymphoma at his house in East Sandwich, Massachusetts, on April 27, 2022. He was aged 79.[1]

Select publications

  • Walden, David (2003). "Looking back at the ARPANET effort, 34 years later - Internet History". LivingInternet. Retrieved May 5, 2022.
  • Walden, David (2014). "The Arpanet IMP Program: Retrospective and Resurrection". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 36 (2): 28–39. doi:10.1109/MAHC.2014.30. ISSN 1934-1547. S2CID 16932766.
  • Walden, David; Raymond S Nickerson, eds. (2011). A culture of innovation: insider accounts of computing and live at BBN. East Sandwich, MA: Waterside Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9789737-0-4. OCLC 778116299.
  • Walden, David (1993). A new American TQM: four practical revolutions in management. et al. Cambridge, MA: Productivity Press. ISBN 978-1-56327-032-1. OCLC 27897718.
  • Walden, David (2001). Four practical revolutions in management: systems for creating unique organizational capability. et al. Portland, OR: Productivity Press. ISBN 978-1-56327-217-2. OCLC 45487580.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d Hafner, Katie (May 3, 2022). "David Walden, Computer Scientist at Dawn of Internet, Dies at 79". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 5, 2022.
  2. ^ "David Walden". TryEngineering.org Powered by IEEE. Retrieved May 5, 2022.
  3. ^ a b c "David Walden". www.calstate.edu. Retrieved May 5, 2022.
  4. ^ a b c Walden, David C. oral history. Gardner Hendrie (interviewer), David Walden (interviewee), Marc Weber (interviewer). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Computer History Museum. June 5, 2009.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  5. ^ "Dave Walden, Looking back at the ARPANET effort, 34 years later - Internet History". LivingInternet. Retrieved May 8, 2022.
  6. ^ Walden, D. C, "A System tor Interprocess Communication in a Resource Sharing Computer Network," Com. of ACM, April 1972, pp 221-230.
  7. ^ "DESIGN ALTERNATIVES FOR COMPUTER NETWORK SECURITY" (PDF). January 1978. The discussion will generally be limited to ARPA-like protocols (CRO-71), but will also consider suggested variations such as Walden's message-switching protocol. ... At the same time, the basic protocol selection should be reviewed to see if the message-switching protocol of Walden might be better suited for a secure net. He discusses the handling of "ports" as capabilities (in an access control sense) but does not consider the potential problems of controlling the establishment of end-to-end communications paths (i.e., setting up the encipherment keys). Since the "connections" in his scheme would only exist for the flow of one message, the dialog-oriented approach that we have taken for the SC might not apply. [*The notion of connection appears to be prerequisite for end-to-end encipherment (using a separate encryption key for each dialog), and to implement the explicit opening and closing of a particular communication path. However, end-to-end protection is possible by a combination of encipherment and other protection means.] In contrast, the current ARPA net protocol is connection-oriented (a connection is created by control commands for use during a dialog) and therefore seems to fit well with our scheme. However, the intuitive appeal of using a message-oriented protocol for a message-switched network deserves additional attention.
  8. ^ McKenzie, Alexander (2011). "INWG and the Conception of the Internet: An Eyewitness Account". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 33 (1): 66–71. doi:10.1109/MAHC.2011.9. ISSN 1934-1547. S2CID 206443072. At the New York meeting, a small team of engineers (E. Aupperle, V. Cerf, B. Kahn, A. McKenzie, R. Metcalfe, R. Scantlebury, et al.) with implementation experience in ARPANET (US), Cyclades (F), MERIT (US), and NPL (UK) created a first draft of an International Transmission Protocol (ITP). ... Specifically noted were the Walden Message-Switching Protocol, ARPA H-H Protocol, NPL High-Level Protocol, CYCLADES Protocol, and EPSS Protocol.... Perhaps the only historical difference that would have occurred if DARPA had switched to the INWG 96 protocol is that rather than Cerf and Kahn being routinely cited as "fathers of the Internet," maybe Cerf, Scantlebury, Zimmermann, and I would have been.
  9. ^ Cerf, V.; Kahn, R. (1974). "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication" (PDF). IEEE Transactions on Communications. 22 (5): 637–648. doi:10.1109/TCOM.1974.1092259. ISSN 1558-0857. The authors wish to thank a number of colleagues for helpful comments during early discussions of international network protocols, especially R. Metcalfe, R. Scantlebury, D. Walden, and H. Zimmerman; D. Davies and L. Pouzin who constructively commented on the fragmentation and accounting issues; and S. Crocker who commented on the creation and destruction of associations.
  10. ^ "CSDL | IEEE Computer Society". www.computer.org. doi:10.1109/mahc.2002.10007. Retrieved May 8, 2022. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  11. ^ Yumpu.com. "Remembering the LFK Network - Walden Family". yumpu.com. Archived from the original on May 31, 2022. Retrieved May 8, 2022.
  12. ^ Berry, Karl; David Walden, eds. (2009). TEX people: interviews form the world of TEX. Portland, OR: TEX Users Group. ISBN 978-0-9824626-0-7. OCLC 709838881.
  13. ^ "[tex-announce] May22 TUG news: war, David Walden, TUG'22, TUGboat, TeX Live, CTAN - tex-announce mailing list - TeX Users Group". tug.org. Retrieved May 8, 2022.

External links

  • David Walden – Remembering the BBN ARPANET Project on YouTube
  • David Walden Family – Collection of Resources
  • David Corydon Walden's Five Careers - biography done by his longtime co-worker, Alexander A. McKenzie, for the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
Authority control databases Edit this at Wikidata
International
  • ISNI
  • VIAF
  • WorldCat
National
  • Norway
  • France
  • BnF data
  • Israel
  • United States
  • Czech Republic
  • Korea
  • Netherlands
  • Portugal
Academics
  • DBLP
Other
  • IdRef