(electronic music)
- [Narrator] Computer scientist Leonard Kleinrock
arrived at UCLA in 1963
fresh from receiving his PhD from MIT.
Kleinrock's research was on data networking
and packet switching.
- Well, the underlying technology of the internet
is packet switching.
That's the way your messages, your videos, your voice,
your pictures, your data are transmitted
in little chunks called packets.
So a long messages broken up into smaller packets,
each packet is addressed and sent through the network
like a bunch of postcards carrying a long letter
independently making their way through the network
arriving at the other end, being put back together again
and delivered to you as an entity,
as a longer message.
- [Narrator] In the late 1960s
the Advanced Research Project Agency
decided that UCLA under Kleinrock's leadership
would become the first node of the ARPANET,
a fledgling network of computers connected
to various research universities across the country.
The first switch known as an interface message processor
arrived on Labor Day weekend, 1969.
The switch was connected to a host computer at UCLA
on September 2nd.
- You might say at September 2nd
that infant internet, that one node
took its first breath of life in that it was born
and met the outside world
which was in the form of our time-shared computer.
But one node does not make a network.
- [Narrator] One month later,
a second switch was delivered to
Stanford Research Institute.
Then on October 29th, 1969,
right here at UCLA on the 3rd floor of Boelter Hall
Kleinrock's group attempted to log into the node
at Stanford Research Institute.
This would be the first message sent on the internet.
- Now to login we have to type L-O-G
and the remote computer is smart enough
to know what we're trying to do.
It types the I-N for us.
So I had Charlie Klein at my end and Mr. Duval
at the other end, programmers,
and instructed Charlie to type in the L-O-G
and he had a telephone connection with Duval.
So Charlie typed L, he said,
"Did you get the L?"
"Yep, got the L."
Typed the O, "Got the O?"
"Got the O."
Typed the G, "Get the G?"
(clap hands) Crash!
The SRI computer crashed.
So the first message ever on the internet was lo.
As in, lo and behold.
We didn't plan it but we could not have come up with
a better message.
Short, prophetic, planning what the future would be.
- [Narrator] In the early days of the internet.
Kleinrock directed the Network Measurement Center
at UCLA Engineering,
designed to test, measure and stress
the limits of the emerging network.
- We tried to break the network.
We sent lots of traffic to individual sites.
We sucked up a lot of traffic ourselves.
We basically tried to send strange messages, heavy messages,
to test the outer envelope of the network.
That was our job.
And we did.
We found that just what the network was capable of,
where it would break,
what we would need to extend its capabilities.
- [Narrator] In 45 years at UCLA,
Leonard Kleinrock has graduated 47 PhD students
and more are still in the pipeline.
- Getting a PhD is learning how to do research.
And so, as their mentor, as their supervisor
it's my responsibility to make sure they have
the right approach to doing research.
We must teach our students
to take a longterm view on research,
not a short-term, narrow view,
but a longterm, broad view, innovative,
dangerous and exciting.
That's the kind of mentality you want to carry on
generation after generation.
- [Narrator] For his pioneering work
on the technological foundation of the internet
and for mentoring generations
of outstanding computer scientists,
Leonard Kleinrock received the National Medal of Science
in September, 2008.
The metal is the nation's highest scientific honor.
For more than 40 years, UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock
has been a leader, an innovator, a scholar and a mentor
in the computer science field.
His pioneering internet work at UCLA Engineering
has a global reach and will have a long-lasting impact.
The UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering
and Applied Science, the birthplace of the internet.
(electronic music ends)