[ubuntu-uk] RIP: Keith Bartlett

[Andrés Muñiz Piniella]

In case it is of interest:
I am sad to report the death recently of Keith Bartlett, who worked at NPL
and was involved
in one of our most significant achievements – the development of packet
switching.
Keith Anthony Bartlett joined NPL in October 1962 to work in the Autonomics
Division as an Executive Officer
following a short period in the RAF. From this area Keith became one of the
founder members of Donald Davies'
Data Communications Group, whose initial purpose was to explore the
feasibility of the communications technique
that became known as 'packet switching' in 1966.
The Data Communication Group (originally a team of 3) developed the first
'straw man' design for a 'packet
switch', a mechanism for transferring data electronically. This work was
published in 1967 (ACM conference in
Gatlinburg, USA), with Keith as a co-author.
Keith’s knowledge and experience in electronic engineering made him a key
member of the small team that began
to explore how a cost-effective computer communications network could be
designed, based upon a combination
of electronic hardware and the small ('mini') computers of the time, acting
as network 'nodes' interconnected by
high speed (1.5 megabit) lines.
A hypothetical 18-node network, intended to cover most of the UK's major
cities, was used as a model to estimate
performance. Keith made significant contributions to the thinking that went
into this feasibility study and the
production of a seminal conference paper based upon it, in autumn 1967 (of
which he was a joint author), which
alerted the international academic community to the benefits of packet
switching. It was as a direct result of this
publication that the packet switching communications technique was adopted
by the US ARPA team that
developed the ARPANET which, in turn, led eventually to the creation of the
Internet. Packet switching is the
communications technology upon which the Internet, and everything that
builds upon it, is based.
During 1967-68, the development of a local network for the NPL campus was
explored to demonstrate the
practical application of packet switching. The development of a
national-scale network, though much to be
desired, was at that stage politically impossible. Keith played a major
role in the planning and design for what
became known as the 'NPL network', the UK's first network based on packet
switching principles. Keith was put in
charge of network hardware development and, with his colleagues, made
significant contributions to the design
and production of several novel components of the network.
The data communications network eventually covered all the buildings in the
78-acre NPL site, and was an
entirely digital system, the lines operating at the then enormous data-rate
of 1Mbit/s. This was probably the world's
first high-speed Local Area Network (LAN).
Keith left NPL in 1972, taking his knowledge to work on network
interconnection, the Post Office EPSS
(Experimental Packet Switching Service) and onto roles with the Department
for Trade and Industry (DTI). He
retired from Civil Service life in 1991.
In 2009, he and a number of other retired colleagues from NPL championed
for a permanent memorial of Donald
Davis's work. He was instrumental in helping set up a small exhibition on
this at the National Museum of
Computing, which includes a short video of Keith recalling working at NPL.
View video footage on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT4AaelwvV4

-- 
Andrés Muñiz-Piniella
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