Chapter 09 - Networking: Emergence 1979-1981
9.1 The NBS and MITRE Workshop of January 1979
Robert Rosenthal of the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) and Norman Meisner of MITRE began contacting a small group of people they thought might attend a forum on “Local Network Protocols” to be held January 31, 1979 in Columbia, MD. In their calls, it became very clear that everyone sensed the importance of local area networking, yet all expressed confusion over what it all meant or what to do about it.
Knowing Metcalfe would attend, which meant they had sufficient Ethernet representation, Rosenthal and Meisner began recruiting representatives from Prime Computer who they knew were developing a token ring network.