[ghaff]

While I don't disagree, there is always a tendency to elevate a few people even when inventions are the collective works of many. Pouzin's contributions were important and he did coin the datagram term. At the same time, he built on earlier packet switching work by Paul Baran at RAND and Donald Davies at the UK National Physical Laboratory.

[notacoward]

I've always wondered: who actually wrote the software for IMPs and such? Who debugged the lower-level (but still essential) operational issues? Was it the people we've heard of, or others whose contributions we've forgotten? I'm guessing the latter, but it's hard to be sure this much later.

[ghaff]

RFC 1 lists a few of the people who were involved: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1

[ggm]

Yes, Donald Davies goes on the same plinth. Baran was taught in our networks lectures in the early eighties. I worked with other NPL staff on OSI systems in the later eighties, nice people.