David Walden Explained

David Walden
Birth Date:	June 7, 1942
Birth Place:	Longview, Washington, U.S.
Death Date:	April 27, 2022 (aged 79)
Death Place:	East Sandwich, Massachusetts, U.S.
Occupation:	Computer scientist
Known For:	Packet switching technologies for ARPANET

David Corydon Walden (June 7, 1942April 27, 2022) was an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer who contributed to the engineering development of the ARPANET, a precursor of the modern Internet. He specifically contributed to the Interface Message Processor, which was the packet switching node for the ARPANET. Walden was a contributor to IEEE Computer Society's Annals of the History of Computing and was a member of the TeX Users Group.

Early life and education

Walden was born on June 7, 1942, to Velva (née Diede) and Clarence Walden in Longview, Washington. His mother was an elementary school teacher while his father was a high school teacher. His family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area when he was aged four. He started out at University of California, Berkeley, before dropping out with poor grades and subsequently moving to San Francisco State University, where he obtained a degree in Mathematics. While at San Francisco State University, he took a course in numerical analysis, a field of mathematics, that triggered his interest in computers, and he worked on an IBM 1620 computer, the university's only computer.^{[1] [2] [3]}

Career

Walden started his career working as a programmer at the space communications division of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory. He moved to join Bolt Beranek & Newman (BBN) in 1967. It was here that he was part of the seven-member engineering team that developed the packet switching technology that powered the ARPANET, one of the first general purpose computer networks that was a precursor of the modern internet. During his time at BBN, the group of engineers developed the Interface Message Processor, that formed the packet switching basis for the network, developed the hardware, wrote the software, and even acted as the Network Operations Center for the network.^[4] Specifically, Walden's efforts focused on developing the packet switching and routing software for the IMP.^[5]

He developed what became known as the "Walden message switching protocol",^{[6] [7] [8]} and was acknowledged by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn in their seminal 1974 paper on internetworking, A Protocol For Packet Network Intercommunication.^[9]

Walden briefly moved to Norway to work at Norsk Data Elektronikk in Oslo, developing the LFK network, a Norwegian packet switching network, between 1970 and 1971, before returning to the United States to continue working with BBN. Walden was the system architect and Norsk Data's project manager in building out this network.^{[10] [11]}

Toward the latter part of his career, Walden focused on management research and wrote extensively on the topic. He was also a member of the TeX Users Group and contributed to content related to digital typesetting and publishing.^[12] He had also served as the group's director and treasurer.^[13] Walden received a honorary doctorate from the San Francisco State University in 2014, for his contributions to the ARPANET. Walden was the co-founder of Center for Quality of Management and a contributor to IEEE Computer Society's Annals of the History of Computing and a member of its History Committee.

Personal life

Walden married Sara Elizabeth Cowles, an educational administrator, in 1966. The couple had a son. Walden died of mantle cell lymphoma at his house in East Sandwich, Massachusetts, on April 27, 2022. He was aged 79.

Select publications

• Web site: Walden . David . 2003 . Looking back at the ARPANET effort, 34 years later - Internet History . May 5, 2022 . LivingInternet . en-US.
• Walden . David . 2014 . The Arpanet IMP Program: Retrospective and Resurrection . IEEE Annals of the History of Computing . 36 . 2 . 28–39 . 10.1109/MAHC.2014.30 . 16932766 . 1934-1547.
• Book: Walden . David . Raymond S Nickerson . 2011 . A culture of innovation: insider accounts of computing and live at BBN . Waterside Publishing . 978-0-9789737-0-4 . East Sandwich, MA . 778116299.
• Book: Walden, David . 1993 . A new American TQM: four practical revolutions in management . Productivity Press . et al.. 978-1-56327-032-1 . Cambridge, MA. 27897718.
• Book: Walden, David . 2001 . Four practical revolutions in management: systems for creating unique organizational capability . Productivity Press . et al.. 978-1-56327-217-2 . Portland, OR . 45487580.

See also

• List of Internet pioneers

External links

• • David Walden FamilyCollection of Resources
• David Corydon Walden's Five Careers - biography done by his longtime co-worker, Alexander A. McKenzie, for the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing

Notes and References

1. News: Hafner . Katie . May 3, 2022 . David Walden, Computer Scientist at Dawn of Internet, Dies at 79 . en-US . The New York Times . May 5, 2022 . 0362-4331.
2. Web site: David Walden . May 5, 2022 . TryEngineering.org Powered by IEEE . en-US.
3. Web site: David Walden . May 5, 2022 . www.calstate.edu . en-US.
4. Book: . Walden, David C. oral history . June 5, 2009 . Computer History Museum . Gardner Hendrie (interviewer), David Walden (interviewee), Marc Weber (interviewer) . Cambridge, Massachusetts.
5. Web site: Dave Walden, Looking back at the ARPANET effort, 34 years later - Internet History . May 8, 2022 . LivingInternet . en-US.
6. Walden, D. C, "A System tor Interprocess Communication in a Resource Sharing Computer Network," Com. of ACM, April 1972, pp 221-230.
7. Web site: January 1978 . DESIGN ALTERNATIVES FOR COMPUTER NETWORK SECURITY . The discussion will generally be limited to ARPA-like protocols (CRO-71), but will also consider suggested variations such as Walden's message-switching protocol. ... At the same time, the basic protocol selection should be reviewed to see if the message-switching protocol of Walden might be better suited for a secure net. He discusses the handling of "ports" as capabilities (in an access control sense) but does not consider the potential problems of controlling the establishment of end-to-end communications paths (i.e., setting up the encipherment keys). Since the "connections" in his scheme would only exist for the flow of one message, the dialog-oriented approach that we have taken for the SC might not apply. [*The notion of connection appears to be prerequisite for end-to-end encipherment (using a separate encryption key for each dialog), and to implement the explicit opening and closing of a particular communication path. However, end-to-end protection is possible by a combination of encipherment and other protection means.] In contrast, the current ARPA net protocol is connection-oriented (a connection is created by control commands for use during a dialog) and therefore seems to fit well with our scheme. However, the intuitive appeal of using a message-oriented protocol for a message-switched network deserves additional attention..
8. McKenzie . Alexander . 2011 . INWG and the Conception of the Internet: An Eyewitness Account . IEEE Annals of the History of Computing . 33 . 1 . 66–71 . 10.1109/MAHC.2011.9 . 1934-1547 . 206443072 . At the New York meeting, a small team of engineers (E. Aupperle, V. Cerf, B. Kahn, A. McKenzie, R. Metcalfe, R. Scantlebury, et al.) with implementation experience in ARPANET (US), Cyclades (F), MERIT (US), and NPL (UK) created a first draft of an International Transmission Protocol (ITP). ... Specifically noted were the Walden Message-Switching Protocol, ARPA H-H Protocol, NPL High-Level Protocol, CYCLADES Protocol, and EPSS Protocol.... Perhaps the only historical difference that would have occurred if DARPA had switched to the INWG 96 protocol is that rather than Cerf and Kahn being routinely cited as “fathers of the Internet,” maybe Cerf, Scantlebury, Zimmermann, and I would have been..
9. Cerf . V. . Kahn . R. . 1974 . A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication . IEEE Transactions on Communications . 22 . 5 . 637–648 . 10.1109/TCOM.1974.1092259 . 1558-0857 . The authors wish to thank a number of colleagues for helpful comments during early discussions of international network protocols, especially R. Metcalfe, R. Scantlebury, D. Walden, and H. Zimmerman; D. Davies and L. Pouzin who constructively commented on the fragmentation and accounting issues; and S. Crocker who commented on the creation and destruction of associations..
10. CSDL IEEE Computer Society . May 8, 2022 . www.computer.org . 10.1109/mahc.2002.10007.
11. Web site: Yumpu.com . Remembering the LFK Network - Walden Family . May 8, 2022 . yumpu.com . en . May 31, 2022 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220531011653/https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/24649874/remembering-the-lfk-network-walden-family . dead .
12. Book: Berry . Karl . David Walden . TEX people: interviews form the world of TEX . 2009 . TEX Users Group . 978-0-9824626-0-7 . Portland, OR . 709838881.
13. Web site: [tex-announce] May22 TUG news: war, David Walden, TUG'22, TUGboat, TeX Live, CTAN - tex-announce mailing list - TeX Users Group ]. May 8, 2022 . tug.org.