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This electronic representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for non-commercial use only. Unauthorized posting of RAND PDFs to a non-RAND Web site is prohibited. RAND PDFs are protected under copyright law. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of our research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please see RAND Permissions. This product is part of the RAND Corporation corporate publication series. Corporate publications describe or promote RAND divisions and programs, summarize research results, or announce upcoming events. RAND and the Information Evolution A History in Essays and Vignettes WILLIS H. WARE C O R P O R A T I O N Funding for the publication of this document was provided through a generous gift from Paul Baran, an alumnus of RAND, and support from RAND via its philanthropic donors and income from operations. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ware, Willis H. RAND and the information evolution : a history in essays and vignettes / Willis H. Ware. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-8330-4513-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Rand Corporation—History. 2. Information technology—Research—United States—History. 3. Computer science—Research—United States—History. 4. Military research—United States—History— 20th century. 5. Research institutes—United States—History—20th century. I. Title. QA76.27.W37 2008 355'.070973—dc22 2008029573 The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. R® is a registered trademark. Book design by Eileen La Russo © Copyright 2008 RAND Corporation All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from RAND. Published 2008 by the RAND Corporation 1776 Main Street, P.O. Box 2138, Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138 1200 South Hayes Street, Arlington, VA 22202-5050 4570 Fifth Avenue, Suite 600, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-2665 RAND URL: http://www.rand.org To order RAND documents or to obtain additional information, contact Distribution Services: Telephone: (310) 451-7002; Fax: (310) 451-6915; Email: [email protected] Energy permits things to exist; information, to behave purposefully. Willis Howard Ware, 1997 —The First Law of Information Primacy1 When the events and achievements in this document were unfolding, the centrality of information in the scheme of things was only vaguely recognized and little discussed. Today, the role of information in the affairs of society, of organizations, of countries, of the world, and of the individual is widely recognized, discussed, researched, and understood. In this document are the earliest beginnings of it in one organization: the RAND Corporation. 1 The author was led to frame this thought in his consideration of protecting the infrastructure of the United States against threats of various kinds, in particular against deliberately invoked ones. This statement reflects his judgment of the priority of energy and information relative to other segments of the infrastructure. See Ware (1998). iii Dedication This work is my legacy to RAND. It, with its people, created an unprecedented culture and environment in which I could develop a wonderful and distinguished career. I dedicate this book to my family: my wife Floy; my daughters Deborah and Alison; my son David; their respective spouses Edwin Pinson, Thomas Manoli, and Astrid Erling; and my granddaughters Arielle and Victoria Manoli. Each has supported me in many ways throughout my 65-year career. I also acknowledge the many scores of individuals—fellow RANDites, professional colleagues, personal friends, acquaintances—who collectively formed the milieu in which both my career and I were embedded, shaped, influenced, and evolved. —Willis H. Ware v Willis H. Ware Preface This document began as a summary of the computer-science research of the RAND com- puter department, then morphed into a reasonably comprehensive professional memoir that records and describes achievements, organizational details, and activities of the RAND department that supplied the corporation with computing support and conducted a pro- gram of computer-science research. Variously named over the years, the department’s life span paralleled the evolution and growth of a commercial computing industry and the concurrent rise of computer science as an accepted discipline in academia. While the document describes the computer machinery that RAND researchers and staff used and the environment in which it operated, it provides no extensive coverage of the programming side of the department nor of the programmer cadre. The many proj- ects that they have undertaken are so varied that it would not be possible to even catalog them, much less to discuss them in detail. A few individuals are mentioned by name, but there were hundreds of others, many of whom made significant and lasting software con- tributions. Likewise, there is no discussion of the many who kept the machines running, funneled punched cards and magnetic tapes into and out of equipment, kept printers loaded with reams of paper, punched endless IBM® cards, and generally made the com- puter shop run in an efficient and orderly manner. Theirs is a story unto itself. The document’s source materials are varied and include both published and un published material, including ephemera. For many topics discussed herein, the princi- pal published RAND documents are cited. Others are available most readily by browsing the RAND online bookstore by author.2 We have done our best to ensure correct and working references to any online material, but of course such materials can move or be deleted without notice at any time, thus rendering those references potentially irretriev- able, with the concomitant loss of historical material. The department produced its share of RAND documents, and a small number of these are available online through RAND. Published documents are available through RAND as well. However, many activities (especially in the earlier days) were not documented at all, or their content and effect were reflected in letters, internal memoranda, personal notes, or personal files. Most of the latter have vanished over the years or rest in boxes stored in garages, attics, or unknown 2 See RAND (2007e). vii viii RAND and the Information Evolution: A History in Essays and Vignettes other places. For many subjects and projects, there are no known publications—formal or internal. There are only memories. The department staff included no historian or archivist. Thanks to the efforts of the current RAND archivist, Vivian Arterbery, there is some material in the RAND corpo- rate archives, access to which is open to qualified historians. The materials on which this work is based—e.g., email messages, documents, downloads—have been deposited with the RAND archivist and are available to accredited historians on request. A few personal collections of material or collections of RAND-published documents have been trans- ferred to archives at the Smithsonian Institution (Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.), the Computer History Museum (Santa Clara, California), or the Charles Babbage Institute Center for the History of Information Technology (University of Minnesota Institute of Technology, Minneapolis, Minnesota). RAND, as well as a generous grant by Paul Baran, supported production and publi- cation of this document.3 Comments and questions should be directed to the compiler and primary author: Willis H. Ware, RAND Corporation, 1776 Main Street, P.O. Box 2138, Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138, 310-393-0411 x6432, [email protected], http://www.rand.org. 3 The entire initial manuscript was prepared in a simple ASCII editor running in a DOS window under Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Professional. It is named esp and is a PC/DOS-oriented version of e, a RAND editor. esp was written by William Rogers, a member of the RAND economics department, whose company (Software Resources) provided RAND unlimited use of it in exchange for being allowed to use e as a design model. The many DOS files were then transferred to Microsoft Word® files to be integrated