[IP] Keith Uncapher, 80, Networking Pioneer, Dies

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Title: approve:ggfarber  Keith Uncapher, 80, Networking Pioneer, Dies

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From: Anthony Watson <<atrigueiro@yahoo.com>>

Keith Uncapher, 80, Networking Pioneer, Dies

By KATIE HAFNER

Keith W. Uncapher, an engineer who oversaw seminal work in computer networking, especially on the underpinnings of what became the Internet, died last Thursday. He was 80 and lived in the Playa del Rey district of Los Angeles. The cause was a heart attack he suffered while flying from Washington to Los Angeles, a son, William B. Uncapher, said.

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In 1950, Mr. Uncapher joined the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif., and eventually became director of its computer science division. A skilled hands-on engineer, Mr. Uncapher had a reputation for being the only one able to make RAND's Johnniac, an early computer named for John von Neumann, work reliably.

But his greatest strengths in his 22 years at RAND were in his skill as a manager, especially in recruiting talented people, said David Farber, a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University who left Bell Laboratories in 1967 to work for Mr. Uncapher at RAND.

It was in the early 1960's that the fundamentals for bundling and transmitting data, or packet switching, were first laid out by Paul Baran, an engineer who worked for Mr. Uncapher. Packet switching breaks data into discrete bundles that are then sent along various paths around a network and reassembled at their destination.

 

remainder of story :

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/16/obituaries/16UNCA.html?todaysheadlines