The Amateur Computerist Gathers an Article Was Written and Published in the Some Documents from That Celebration
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The Amateur Comp u terist http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ Summer 2008 ‘Across the Great Wall’ Volume 16 No. 2 2007. Participating were international Internet pio- Celebration neers, representatives of the Internet in China and The First Email Message from China to CSNET historians and journalists. From 1983 to 1987, two teams of scientists and engineers worked to overcome the technical, financial, and geographic obstacles to set up an email connection between China and the interna- tional CSNET. One team was centered around Werner Zorn at Karlsruhe University in the Federal Republic of Germany. The other team was under the general guidance of Wang Yuenfung at the In- stitute for Computer Applications (ICA) in the Peo- ple’s Republic of China. The project succeeded based on the scientific and technical skill and friendship, resourcefulness and dedication of the members of both teams. The first successful email message was sent on Sept 20, 1987 from Beijing to computer scien- tists in Germany, the U.S. and Ireland. The China- CSNET connection was granted official recogni- tion and approval on Nov 8 1987 when a letter (Composed 14 Sept 1987, sent 20 Sept 1987) signed by the Director of the U.S. National Science Foundation Division of Networking and Commu- A celebration of the 20th anniversary of the nications Research and Infrastructure Stephen first email message that was sent from China to the Wolff was forwarded to the head of the Chinese world via the international Computer Science Net- delegation, Yang Chuquan at an International work (CSNET) was held at the Hasso Plattner In- Networkshop in the U.S. From then on more and stitute in Potsdam Germany on September 18-19, more of the scientific community in China had the possibility of email contact with their colleagues Table of Contents and friends throughout the world. In 1994 via a Celebration.......................... Page 1 connection between China and the U.S., China es- Panel Discussion...................... Page 2 tablished full general Internet connectivity beyond Werner Zorn Interview. Page 12 just email. Cordial Thanks to our Friends. Page 13 But there is more to the story of the first email Steps Toward China on the Internet. Page 14 message. Netizens and the New News. Page 15 Over the years, especially since the middle Conference Presentation Videos Online. Page 22 1990s, Internet access and Internet use has spread Context for the Spread of CSNET . Page 22 throughout China. Celebrations have occasionally Netizen Journalism: An Interview. Page 27 been held to mark milestones of Internet history in Webpage: http://www.ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn16-2.pdf Page 1 China. But curiously, the role of Werner Zorn and So on Sept 18 and 19, 2007 the celebration Wang Yuenfung was absent or minimized in the was held with Hu Qiheng, Werner Zorn, Lawrence telling of the early roots of the Chinese connection Landweber, Stephen Wolff and others participat- to the Internet. ing. It was the 20th anniversary of the first email In 2004, two Amateur Computerist editors lo- message and a time when the same history was cated and interviewed Werner Zorn in Berlin. He recognized in Germany and China. As Hu Qiheng shared his memories of the events of 1983 to 1987 said in her presentation, and backed his memories up with documents from The international collaboration in science and that period. One editor took up to write an article technology is the driving force for computer about this history. His research took him mostly to networking across the country borders and fa- web sites in China. The story told there gave most cilitating the early Internet development in credit for the China-CSNET connection to a Chi- China. Among them the collaborations of nese engineer, Qian Tianbai whom Zorn had CANET [China Academic Network] of China hardly mentioned. Mostly missing from the history with Karlsruhe University and the CSNET, on the websites in China was the international BITNET of the U.S. had contributed directly to component which Zorn had stressed. the introduction of Internet into China. Qian Tianbai’s name is not among the 13 sig- The achievement of the CSNET email connec- natures on the first email message and there was tivity with China was based on the collaboration of evidence that he was not in China at the time. Zorn Professors Zorn and Wang and their teams. The was able to provide a copy of the letter signed by achievement of an accurate telling of that history Stephen Wolff. Through further digging and via in China was the result of collaboration of Profes- email correspondence with two of the Chinese sig- sor Zorn and Mdm. Hu. Both these achievements natories of the first email message, it was possible were celebrated in Potsdam in September 2007. to corroborate Zorn’s telling of the events. This issue of the Amateur Computerist gathers An article was written and published in the some documents from that celebration. Amateur Computerist telling the corroborated story of the first email from China to CSNET giving jus- The story of this first email message has been told tified credit to Wang and Zorn and their teams and in the Amateur Computerist*. A video presentation to Lawrence Landweber of the CSNET and Ste- by Werner Zorn of this history can be viewed at phen Wolff. A bit later Zorn was invited to tell the http://www.tele-task.de/page50_lecture3202.html. story at a panel planned for Nov 2005 in conjunc- *[See http://ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn13-1.pdf and tion with the United Nations World Summit on http://ais.org/~jrh/acn/ACn15-2.pdf] Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis. Present in Tunis when Zorn presented his tell- ing of the international effort and collaboration [Editor’s note: The following is an edited transcript especially between himself and Wang Yuenfung of the panel of Internet pioneers at the Potsdam was Madame Hu Qiheng, Vice President, China celebration.] Association for Science and Technology, and Chair of Internet Society of China. She rose and Panel Discussion: The spoke of her friendship with Qian Tianbai but said Road to the First Email* she would investigate why the story told in China differed from the one Zorn told. Eighteen months Date: September 19, 2007 later, entries on the official CNNIC website Location: Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam Germany Internet Timeline of China 1987~1996 were Moderator: Dennis Jennings, first director of the U.S. National Science Foundation Net (NSFNET) changed to give proper credit to the work of Zorn and Wang, their teams and the international effort Panel: that made possible the first email connectivity be- Jay Hauben, Internet historian, Amateur Computerist News- tween China and the world via CSNET. letter Editor http://www.cnnic.net.cn/html/Dir/2003/12/12/2000.htm Prof. Hu Qiheng, Chairwoman Internet Society of China (ISC), Honorary Member of China Association for Science and Technology, member of Chinese Academy of Engineering Page 2 and the Chair of Steering Committee for CNNIC We will ask him later why his signature was so Daniel Karrenberg, Chairman Board of Trustees of the important. What would we have done without it? It Internet Society (ISOC) Prof. Lawrence H. Landweber, Co-Founder of the Computer was one of my questions. And he is now with Science Net (CSNET) Cisco for five years. Dr. Stephen S. Wolff, second director of the National Science Daniel Karrenberg is originally coming from Foundation Net (NSFNET) Dortmund2. Dortmund was a second source besides Prof. Werner Zorn, Hasso Plattner Institute Karlsruhe3. We were two friendly connected insti- tutes. Dortmund was origin coming from the Unix Zorn: Hello. I welcome you and welcome the network side and Karlsruhe by CSNET. Daniel panel. I want to introduce a little the persons on the emigrated quite early to the Netherlands. We may panel. ask why you emigrated and went to the Center for I start with Dennis Jennings. He is sitting in the Mathematics and Informatics (CWI) in the Nether- middle. Because of his smart Irish/English accent, lands, the Institute which later ran the RIPE regis- I chose him to chair the panel. He was so friendly try which became one of the most important regis- he could not resist and say he would not do the job. tries in the world. RIPE covers 30 percent of all IP But he is also a very important person in network- addresses, very important, which cover a big part ing. Dennis was the director of EARN, the IBM of the northern hemisphere. driven or based European Academic Research Net- Stephen and Daniel have been honored with work in the 1980s. So Europe was for a while his the John Postal Award, Stephen in 2002 and job. Underneath him were the directors in the dif- Daniel in 2001. Is that correct? ferent countries. Then his most prominent job was the project leader of the NSFNET project in 1986- Karrenberg: 2001, I believe. I am not sure. 1987, the supercomputer network in the United States. He came from Dublin and spent a year Zorn: I think you were honored because of every- there. thing, both running services and also for your con- tribution in the IETF with the RFCs to prolong the Jennings: Fifteen months life time of IPv4 address space through Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDA). That was one very Zorn: Fifteen months. You see, he is one of the big contribution. The Internet is alive more than cornerstones in networking. ten years later because CIDA solved a problem Larry Landweber is for me the father of scien- threatening the Internet. You can perhaps say a few tific networking.