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: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT4AaelwvV4">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT4AaelwvV4</a> -- Andrés Muñiz-Piniella