"Welcome to Australia. That's all the pleasantry you'll get.
 
"Let's be clear here: we want something you have and you want something we have. That's why we're here. Right.
 
"Before we tell you what we want let us explain briefly how the networking impulse came into this country, for only so can we know why and how our network is what it is today.
 
"Allow us, first, to explain to you simply the human geography of this island continent." Tom drew a large oval in chalk on the blackboard. Someone, presumably Tasmanian, drew a small heart-shape below its lower left corner.
 
"You may be proud of your country's size, but remember that ours is the size of the contiguous United States with less than a tenth of the people. Three-fifth of us live in five cities. Each of these is the capital of a state. So one may say that our nation is locally suburbanized, regionally centralized, and nationally decentralized, since the centers are very far apart.
 
"When Americans travel from coast to coast, you have the Interstate Highway System. You have the Transcontinental Railroad. We have nothing of the sort - we have stretches of hundreds of miles without any petrol. It is only recently that we have been able to travel from Perth to Sydney without having to change trains twice through the journey.
 
"We are the third country to get a computer, after the USA and England. That was in 1949. In the two decades since, computing power developed in the state capitals. They had the demographic, the economic, and in many cases the intellectual power. But it is the national capital, Canberra, that has the most powerful computers. The ANU is there. CSIRO is there.
 
"Due to Canberra's disproportionate computing power, data from the state capital computers, essentially telemetry stations for CSIRO, need to get to Canberra for processing. For the first fifteen or so years of Australian computing, the data were physically shipped. From what we have said about Australia, you can tell how inconvenient it was to transport the data.
 
"In 1962, we began a project to form a network of all computers. It was in all the newspapers. It was the bomb. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry knew how big of a deal it was.
 
"It began in 1966 after millions of pounds, and to say the least it was revolutionary. Even though it sent 30 bits a second and somebody had to be on duty at the receiving terminal to constantly watch the data come in.
 
"In the five years since we've figured out a packet switching network just as good as you have. Here is where your help comes in.
 
"The CSIRO Division of Computing Research has a central computer in Canberra. Too bloody cold in the winter, too bloody far from the sea in the summer." Tom drew a dot inside the oval, at a distance from, but close to, the edge.
 
"There's a computer in Brisbane - because banana bending is an elaborate art requiring great technical ability." He drew a dot about halfway up the right side of the oval.
 
"There's one in Perth - anything to bring those sandgropers up with the times." He drew a dot in the lower-left corner.
 
"There's one in Adelaide - because it's so dull and boring eating crow doesn't keep from getting sick of the state anymore." He drew a dot and some squiggly lines at the lower end of the minor axis of the oval.
 
"There's one in Melbourne - suitably geared to the sophistication of those who think pounding the crap out of whoever has the ball is a real sport." He drew a dot on the oval across from the small heart-shape.
 
"And, lastly, there's one in Sydney - the only city worth its name in the country." He drew a dot right of the first dot he had drawn, on the edge of the oval. "There's no computer in Tasmania because it's hard to operate a terminal when you've only got five fingers between both hands."
 
He connected every dot on the edge of the oval with the dot inside it. "Herein lies the problem. If the Canberra computer were to be out of commission for any reason, all our work would be shut down. There's no way the coastal computers can communicate with each other without going through Canberra.
 
"Another problem: all the computers have to be perfectly the same. We can't hardly innovate. What Canberra says, we follow. Otherwise the network will fail.
 
"A network similar to yours is being worked on, but on a local level only. Connections run from the Canberra computer to those of a few other Commonwealth government departments in the vicinity. One has also been established in Perth - from the CSIRO computer there to that of the University of Western Australia. Both are called 'wide area networks' despite having a radius of only seven or eight miles!
 
"We need your help because the universities of this country have considerable processing power and, more importantly, the Federal near-monopoly on computing talent and computing power is about to end. Similar to what has occurred in your country, the University of Sydney is introducing a computer science specialization. Not to be bested, the University of Melbourne has announced plans to start a full-fledged faculty for computer science by mid-decade.
 
"Currently most of the computer programmers in this country are maths majors who received their training in computers from the Federal Government, with the attendant conditions and expectations. But if we didn't ask for your help now, the universities would have sooner rather than later. It is difficult to conceive that a network between institutions that have spent nearly the whole duration of the war taking potshots at everything the Government does or says will satisfy adequately the needs for national defense. The question is simply: how do we network computers without making the same as each other?"
 
The Australian and American delegations applauded. Homer came up.
 
"Thank you, Mr. Robertson, for your concise, informative, and in many parts entertaining, presentation." Apparently the crowd had been saving their laughter for this part.
 
"What - I rehearse this for a week and all of you laugh at a garden-variety thank-you line? Anyway, it's Tom," preferred Tom.
 
"Homer," reciprocated Homer.
 
"As Tom said, we're here to find out what we need from each other. We can explain what that is on our side in three letters: DAD.
 
"May not be the most felicitous acronym but you invented it, you can call it what you want. We get Australian journals here. Drum and Display. Your system for storing up to 6 million bytes, making them available at any other time to all other networked computers, and displaying them graphically. It's the talk of the town among the American computing community. 
 
"We want to know everything about it. And frankly, based on what you've said, you're worth a damn sight more to us than we are to you.
 
"Now let me outline at least the theory of how we have solved problems similar to the ones you have described to us. I mean this without the slightest intent to ridicule - but your efforts in treating the coastal computers as simply eyes for the brain that is Canberra could have been greatly reduced, had you adopted a peer-to-peer orientation where all nodes are equal.
 
"How do we do that, you might ask? Let us tell you how we have done it. The computers in our network are not connected directly to each other like those in yours are. Instead, every computer is connected to an Interface Message Processor - an IMP. The IMPs split every message up into packets, and store and forward messages passing through. The important thing is, the IMPs have a certain way of expressing messages so they can understand each other - a 'protocol'. Messages have to be 'translated' into this protocol, otherwise they can't be sent. 
 
"Sounds like extra hassle, doesn't it? Well, the hassle pays off. The computers don't have to be the same for them to be networked. Only the IMPs need to be. Each computer is responsible for translating the messages it sends to its IMP. As such, the work is done by those who are most familiar with the computer.
 
"With that out of the way, we have been able to work on other things. With the Decode-Encode Language, or DEL, we've been able to conveniently execute programs on other computers by having them send some of the code for them onto our own local computer. With TELNET, we've been able to view data and run programs on other computers as if they were on our own computer - basically having the same effect as what you have done but much greater flexibility in other fields. We have now agreed upon a protocol for transferring files.
 
"None of this is intended to insult your efforts. Had you realized the breakthrough we had, all the other innovations we have made would have come easy. But we've pointed you on your way."
 
The delegations applauded in a way to avoid creating the impression that they were giving unequal weight to either speech. Tom retook the floor.
 
"I'd like to introduce a man.
 
"A man who has seen the nonmathematical applications of computing since 1948.
 
"A man whose works on the subject exceed one thousand pages and approach the word count of three full-length novels.
 
"A man who was the pioneer of Australia's computer revolution.
 
"A man who has given 'Australian-designed and -built' a new, better meaning.
 
"A man whose willingness to be with us here today says all about him. No compliment can be paid to him which exceeds his merit. This makes any further introduction superfluous. Gentlemen - I give you - Trevor Pearcey!"
 
Trevor walked up from the audience accompanied by thunderous applause. He was a man of about fifty, with a full head of black hair and horn-rimmed glasses. He spoke quickly but deliberately, with a trace of old England twenty-five years down under could not erase.
 
"No one who knows our history can fail to note with regret the missed opportunities amidst our gold rushes, our mineral booms, our expansions and depressions, like monsoon winds coming and going without leaving anything behind for the long term. Regrettably, computing is one of those missed opportunities.
 
"Australia was one of the earliest adopters of computing. We deserve that name too - we had little or no help from England or America. Yet, computing here has stagnated. Through the fifties and most of the sixties, successive governments seemed content to buy technology from elsewhere with our nonrenewable wealth.
 
"The Division of Computing Research does not, has not, and will not believe in this un-Australian idea. Let our national poet, Henry Lawson, tell you who we are. 'If you fancy that your people came of better stock than mine, / If you hint of higher breeding by a word or by a sign, / If you're proud because of fortune or the clever things you do -- / Then I'll play no second fiddle: I'm a prouder man than you!'"
 
The audience applauded. "The presentations have been excellent. They explain the technical aspects of your work to each other very well. But may I invite you, at this moment, to contemplate its broader and deeper impact.
 
"The strengths and weaknesses of CSIRONET and ARPANET are derived from their purposes. CSIRONET focuses on data transmission and ARPANET focuses on remote computer operation. But may I suggest that the ideal network needs both? Both 'know-what' - data - and 'know-how' - programs - need to go between computers.
 
"I have a vision. It is one I believe many of us will live to see as a reality. It is where everyone will have access, through a device in his home, to an encyclopedia, dictionary, and other information that today requires many volumes to store. Where if something is known by any person, it is known by all people.
 
"We are pretty much on the same level as you. In some aspects we are ahead, and in others behind, but they balance each other out. It's a good start but it will need every one of us to keep going. When my vision becomes a reality, I hope Australians will be pleased and proud that they got a 'fair go' and did not waste it."