|
Growing Needs
It was hoped that
this network would also serve another growing need.
The
Department of Defense bought computers for the various agencies around
the country that were doing Department of Defense research. However, there
was no way for the different sites to access a computer at another site.
The ability to do so would be advantageous in two major respects:
- Each research
site tended to have a different make and model of computer.
This meant, then, that each site was likely to have certain computer
capabilities that the computer at another site might not have. The IPTO
researchers wished that they could occasionally make use of
the capabilities of another research site's computer.
- The researchers
at the various Department of Defense research sites collaborated
on various research projects. However, there was no easy way for the
computers at their respective sites to share data.
Not only was distance the problem: different makes of computers were
incompatible with others (not unlike the incompatibility
of PCs and Macintosh computers today).
Thus, the networking
of computers was not merely a hardware problem—i.e.,
a matter of constructing a physical connection between computers. Rather,
the project also presented a significant software problem:
namely, how to make it possible for incompatible computers to exchange
information.
|
|