sharing computer networks. They expected, sim-
ilar to NDRE, that to be of special interest to
Norway. NDRE’s director Finn Lied, research
superintendent Karl Holberg and research engi-
neer Yngvar Lundh were positive to the pro-
posal. The Norwegian participation in the col-
laboration started in 1972 and was led by Yng-
var Lundh. A “Terminal Interface Message Pro-
cessor” – TIP – was provided by ARPA and
installed in 1973. A TIP could connect both to
host computers and directly to simple interactive
terminals.
ARPA already had a leased line of 9,600 bits per
second between Washington and NORSAR, a
seismic observatory at the NDRE site at Kjeller,
Norway, the result of another earlier collabora-
tion project between (another part of) ARPA and
NDRE. That opened a good opportunity for the
two divisions of ARPA to co-operate, thus en-
abling both co-operation in international net-
working and improvements for the seismic co-
operation with Norsar. The 9,600 bits per second
line had a multiplexer installed to create two
independent channels. The new channel was for
use by the Arpanet computer networking experi-
ments. Another line was leased between Kjeller
and London where another TIP was installed at
UCL. This use of the seismic line thus made it
economically feasible to extend the Arpanet to
Norway and England.
To build a Norwegian group took some time
because of lack of funding. It was hard to con-
vince Norwegian financing sources of the impor-
tance of computer networking. For the first two
years Lundh’s group consisted of two of his
graduate students besides himself. In 1975 Paal
Spilling, a Ph.D. in nuclear physics looking for a
currently more active field of research, was
assigned to Lundh’s project. Later on, some
other well-qualified engineers were assigned,
similarly available in NDRE’s personnel budget.
Persistent invitation by NDRE to NTA’s
research establishment to participate resulted in
the free loan for experimental purposes of a
spare channel in the Intelsat IV satellite and a
spare line between NDRE and the existing Scan-
dinavian satellite earth station at Tanum, Swe-
den. This experimental facility including a Satel-
lite Interface Message Processor – SIMP – pro-
vided by ARPA was established in mid 1975.
It was the enthusiastic interest of NDRE’s re-
search engineers and management for resource
sharing networks and new forms of communica-
tions that was the decisive factor and driving
force of NDRE’s participation. Misunderstand-
ings have prevailed in some comments about
NORSAR’s role in the development. The facts
are that NORSAR staff did not participate in the
development of Internet technology. The NDRE
TIP was placed at NORSAR, which resided in a
civilian building just outside NDRE’s fence.
Hence, access to the TIP was unrestricted, unlike
NDRE’s buildings which were located on mili-
tary grounds. Lundh, backed by ARPA, made
efforts to create interest in the Arpanet experi-
ments at other establishments, notably the neigh-
bouring large computer centre shared by the
University of Oslo and some other academic
institutions. During the 1970s such interest was
next to non-existent, perhaps due to generally
low political esteem of defence related activities
in that period of time, despite the basic research
nature of this networking research and develop-
ment. When the NDRE TIP (sometimes referred
to as the NORSAR TIP) had been established,
interested NORSAR staff began to investigate
the possibilities for exchange of seismic data
through Arpanet as an alternative to their tradi-
tional data exchange connection. As already
mentioned they had a leased line for routine data
exchange as part of co-operation on seismic
research with peer institutions in the US.Increasing Interest
Most universities, both in Norway and else-
where, kept well away from the ARPA-collabo-
ration during the 1970s. This situation slowly
began to change during the 1980s, because of a
change in prevailing political attitudes, or for
other reasons. If nothing else, many academic
people discovered the convenient communica-
tions offered by the Internet. The network gradu-
ally became global.Commercial traffic was prohibited in the
Arpanet from the outset and that was still the
rule as the network changed into Internet. The
network was an experimental facility supported
for research purposes. The ban on commercial
traffic was lifted in 1991. From then on the num-
ber of connected computers and the aggregate
traffic began to grow exponentially. In the early
1990s such numbers doubled every seven
months, approximately.From 1994 a few articles in the general press
began to mention the Internet as an interesting
phenomenon. Since then of course, Internetsoon
flew all around the world as a household word
everywhere. From practical obscurity to com-
mon knowledge and use world-wide in less than
ten years is a remarkable if not unique develop-
ment in technological history.Transfer techniques and computer co-operation
techniques that are basic to the Internet are
rather alien to traditional forms of telecommuni-
cation. The established telecom operating com-
panies demonstrated little understanding of
Internet technology. That attitude did not change
appreciably until the mid 1990s. But from then