Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider (March 11, 1915 – June 26, 1990), known simply as J.C.R. or "Lick" was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
computer scientistComputer science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation, and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems. It is frequently described as the systematic study of algorithmic processes that create, describe and transform...
, considered one of the most important figures in
computer scienceThe history of computer science began long before the modern discipline of computer science that emerged in the twentieth century, and hinted at in the centuries prior...
and general computing history.
Licklider was born in
St. Louis, MissouriSt. Louis is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. With an estimated population of 354,361 in 2008, it is the principal municipality of Greater St. Louis, population 2,866,517, the largest urban area in Missouri and sixteenth largest in the United States...
,
USAThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. He was the
only childAn only child is a child with no siblings, either biological or adopted. Although first-born children may be considered temporary only children, and have a similar early family environment, the term only child is generally applied only to those individuals who never have siblings...
of an insurance salesman and his wife. He displayed early engineering talent, building
model airplaneModel aircraft are flying or non-flying models of existing or imaginary aircraft, often scaled down versions of full size planes, using materials such as balsa wood, foam and fiberglass. Designs range from simple gliders, to accurate scale models, some of which can be very large.Models may be built...
s. He carried on with his hobby of refurbishing automobiles throughout his life.
He studied at
Washington University in St. LouisWashington University in St. Louis is a nonsectarian, private research university located in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1853 and named for George Washington, the university has students and faculty from all fifty U.S. states and more than one hundred and twenty five nations...
, where he received a BA in 1937, majoring in
physicsPhysics is a natural science; it is the study of matter and its motion through spacetime and all that derives from these, such as energy and force...
,
mathematicsMathematics is the science and study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns, formulate new conjectures, and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions....
and
psychologyPsychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and sometimes scientific, study of human or animal mental functions and behavior...
, and an MA in psychology in 1938.
Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider (March 11, 1915 – June 26, 1990), known simply as J.C.R. or "Lick" was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
computer scientistComputer science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation, and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems. It is frequently described as the systematic study of algorithmic processes that create, describe and transform...
, considered one of the most important figures in
computer scienceThe history of computer science began long before the modern discipline of computer science that emerged in the twentieth century, and hinted at in the centuries prior...
and general computing history.
Biography
Licklider was born in
St. Louis, MissouriSt. Louis is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. With an estimated population of 354,361 in 2008, it is the principal municipality of Greater St. Louis, population 2,866,517, the largest urban area in Missouri and sixteenth largest in the United States...
,
USAThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. He was the
only childAn only child is a child with no siblings, either biological or adopted. Although first-born children may be considered temporary only children, and have a similar early family environment, the term only child is generally applied only to those individuals who never have siblings...
of an insurance salesman and his wife. He displayed early engineering talent, building
model airplaneModel aircraft are flying or non-flying models of existing or imaginary aircraft, often scaled down versions of full size planes, using materials such as balsa wood, foam and fiberglass. Designs range from simple gliders, to accurate scale models, some of which can be very large.Models may be built...
s. He carried on with his hobby of refurbishing automobiles throughout his life.
He studied at
Washington University in St. LouisWashington University in St. Louis is a nonsectarian, private research university located in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1853 and named for George Washington, the university has students and faculty from all fifty U.S. states and more than one hundred and twenty five nations...
, where he received a BA in 1937, majoring in
physicsPhysics is a natural science; it is the study of matter and its motion through spacetime and all that derives from these, such as energy and force...
,
mathematicsMathematics is the science and study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns, formulate new conjectures, and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions....
and
psychologyPsychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and sometimes scientific, study of human or animal mental functions and behavior...
, and an MA in psychology in 1938. He received a
PhDDoctor of Philosophy, abbreviated PhD , for the Latin , meaning "teacher of philosophy", or alternatively, DPhil, for the equivalent , is an advanced academic degree awarded by universities...
in
psychoacousticsPsychoacoustics is the study of subjective human perception of sounds. Alternatively it can be described as the study of the psychological correlates of the physical parameters of acoustics.- Background :...
from the
University of RochesterThe University of Rochester is a private, nonsectarian, research university located in Rochester, New York. The University grants undergraduate, graduate, doctoral, and professional degrees through six schools and various interdisciplinary programs...
in 1942, and worked at the Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory at
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
from 1943 to 1950.
He became interested in
information technologyInformation technology , as defined by the Information Technology Association of America , is "the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware." IT deals with the use of electronic...
, and moved to
MITThe Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological research...
in 1950 as an associate professor, where he served on a committee that established
MIT Lincoln LaboratoryMIT Lincoln Laboratory, also known as Lincoln Lab, is a federally funded research and development center managed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and primarily funded by the United States Department of Defense....
and established a psychology programme for engineering students.
In 1957 he received the Franklin V. Taylor Award from the Society of Engineering Psychologists. In 1958, he was elected President of the Acoustical Society of America, and in 1990 he received the Commonwealth Award for Distinguished Service.
In October 1962, Licklider was appointed head of the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) at ARPA, the
United States Department of DefenseThe United States Department of Defense is the federal department charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government relating directly to national security and the military...
Advanced Research Projects Agency.
In 1963, he was named Director of Behavioral Sciences Command & Control Research at ARPA. In April of that year, he sent a memo to his colleagues in which he outlined the early challenges presented in trying to establish a time-sharing network of computers with the software of the era. Ultimately, his vision led to
ARPANetThe ARPANET created by ARPA of the United States Department of Defense during the Cold War, was the world's first operational packet switching network, and the predecessor of the global Internet....
, the precursor of today's
InternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
.
In 1968, J.C.R. Licklider became director of
Project MACMIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory...
at MIT, and a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering. Project MAC had produced the first computer time-sharing system, CTSS, and one of the first
onlineA computer network is a group of interconnected computers. Networks may be classified according to a wide variety of characteristics. This article provides a general overview of some types and categories and also presents the basic components of a network....
setups with the development of
MulticsMultics was an extremely influential early time-sharing operating system. The project was started in 1964. The last known running Multics installation was shut down on October 30, 2000....
(work on which commenced in 1964). Multics was the direct ancestor of the
UnixUnix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
operating systemAn operating system is an interface between hardware and user which is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the resources of the computer that acts as a host for computing applications run on the machine. As a host, one of the purposes of an operating...
developed at
Bell LabsBell Laboratories is the research and development organization of Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company .Bell Laboratories has had its headquarters at Murray Hill, New Jersey, and it has research and development facilities...
by Ken Thompson and
Dennis RitchieDennis MacAlistair Ritchie is an American computer scientist notable for his influence on C and other programming languages, and on operating systems such as Multics and Unix. He received the Turing Award in 1983 and the National Medal of Technology in 1998...
in 1970.
He retired and became Professor
EmeritusEmeritus is an adjective that is used in the title of a retired professor, bishop, or other professional. Emerita is often used as the female equivalent, although avoided by purists, since phrases such as professor emerita are ungrammatical in Latin...
in 1985. He died in 1990 in
Arlington, MassachusettsArlington is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, six miles northwest of Boston. The population was 42,389 at the 2000 census.-History:...
.
Psychoacoustics
In the
psychoacousticsPsychoacoustics is the study of subjective human perception of sounds. Alternatively it can be described as the study of the psychological correlates of the physical parameters of acoustics.- Background :...
field, Licklider is most remembered for his 1951 "Duplex Theory of Pitch Perception," presented in a paper that has been cited hundreds of times, was reprinted in a 1979 book, and formed the basis for modern models of
pitchPitch is the property of a sound that allows the construction of melodies; pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower", and are quantified as frequencies , corresponding very nearly to the repetition rate of sound waves....
perception.
Information technology
Licklider became interested in
information technologyInformation technology , as defined by the Information Technology Association of America , is "the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware." IT deals with the use of electronic...
early in his career. Much like
Vannevar BushVannevar Bush was an American engineer and science administrator known for his work on analog computing, his political role in the development of the atomic bomb, and the idea of the memex, an adjustable microfilm-viewer which is somewhat analogous to the World Wide Web.Bush was a well-known...
, J.C.R. Licklider's contribution to the development of the
InternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
consists of ideas, not inventions. He foresaw the need for networked computers with easy user interfaces.
His ideas foretold of graphical computing, point-and-click interfaces, digital libraries, e-commerce, online banking, and software that would exist on a network and migrate wherever it was needed. He has been called "computing's
Johnny AppleseedJohnny Appleseed , born John Chapman, was an American pioneer nurseryman who introduced apple trees to large parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois...
" for having planted the seeds of computing in the digital age.
Licklider was instrumental in conceiving, funding and managing the research that led to modern personal computers and the Internet. His seminal paper on
Man-Computer Symbiosis foreshadowed interactive computing, and he went on to fund early efforts in time-sharing and application development, most notably the work of
Douglas EngelbartDr. Douglas C. Engelbart is an American inventor and early computer pioneer. He is best known for inventing the computer mouse, as a pioneer of human-computer interaction whose team developed hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to GUIs; and as a committed and vocal proponent of the...
, who founded the
Augmentation Research CenterStanford Research Institute's Augmentation Research Center was founded by electrical engineer Douglas Engelbart to develop and experiment with new tools and techniques for collaboration and information processing. The main product to come out of ARC was the revolutionary oN-Line System, better...
at Stanford Research Institute and created the famous
On-Line SystemNLS, or the "oN-Line System", was a revolutionary computer collaboration system designed by Douglas Engelbart and the researchers at the Augmentation Research Center at the Stanford Research Institute during the 1960s...
.
Semi Automatic Ground Environment
He worked on a
Cold WarThe Cold War was the continuing state of political conflict, military tension, and economic competition existing after World War II , primarily between the USSR and its satellite states, and the powers of the Western world, including the United States...
project known as
Semi Automatic Ground EnvironmentThe Semi-Automatic Ground Environment was an automated control system for tracking and intercepting enemy bomber aircraft used by NORAD from the late 1950s into the 1980s...
(better known by its acronym "SAGE"), designed to create a computer-aided air defense system. The SAGE system included computers that collected and presented data to a human operator, who then chose the appropriate response. In 1957, he became a Vice President at
Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc.BBN Technologies is a high-technology company which provides research and development services. BBN is based next to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA...
, where he bought the first production
PDP-1The PDP-1 was the first computer in Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP series and was first produced in 1960. It is famous for being the computer most important in the creation of hacker culture, at MIT, BBN and elsewhere...
computer and conducted the first public demonstration of
time-sharingTime-sharing is sharing a computing resource among many users by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking. Its introduction in the 1960s, and emergence as the prominent model of computing in the 1970s, represents a major technological shift in the history of computing...
. He was elected president of the
Acoustical Society of AmericaThe Acoustical Society of America is an international scientific society dedicated to increasing and diffusing the knowledge of acoustics and its practical applications.-History:...
in 1958.
He played a similar role in conceiving of and funding early networking research, most notably the
ARPAnetThe ARPANET created by ARPA of the United States Department of Defense during the Cold War, was the world's first operational packet switching network, and the predecessor of the global Internet....
. His 1968 paper on
The Computer as a Communication Device predicts the use of computer networks to support communities of common interest and collaboration without regard to location.
Man-Computer Symbiosis
In 1960, Licklider wrote his famous paper
Man-Computer Symbiosis, which outlined the need for simpler interaction between computers and computer users. Licklider has been credited as an early pioneer of
cyberneticsCybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to control theory and systems theory...
and
artificial intelligenceArtificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science which aims to create it. Textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents,"...
(AI).
http://www.thocp.net/biographies/licklidder_jcr.html Unlike many AI practitioners, Licklider never felt that men would be replaced by computer-based beings. As he wrote in that article: "Men will set the goals, formulate the hypotheses, determine the criteria, and perform the evaluations. Computing machines will do the routinizable work that must be done to prepare the way for insights and decisions in technical and scientific thinking."
Global computer network
Licklider formulated the earliest ideas of a global computer network in August 1962 at BBN, in a series of memos discussing the "Intergalactic Computer Network" concept. These ideas contained almost everything that the Internet is today. His paper
The Computer as a Communication Device, Science and Technology, April 1968, illustrates his vision of network applications.
Licklider submitted the paper
Televistas: Looking ahead through side windows to the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television in 1967. In this paper, he describes a radical departure from the "broadcast" model of television. Instead, he advocates a two-way communications network. The Carnegie Commission led to the creation of the
Corporation for Public BroadcastingThe Corporation for Public Broadcasting is a private non-profit corporation created by an act of the United States Congress and largely funded by the United States Federal Government to promote public broadcasting...
. Although the Carnegie Commission's report explains that "Dr. Licklider's paper was completed after the Commission had formulated its own conclusions," President Johnson
said at the signing of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, "So I think we must consider new ways to build a great network for knowledge-not just a broadcast system, but one that employs every means of sending and of storing information that the individual can use."
Project MAC
In October 1962, Licklider was appointed head of the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) at
ARPAThe Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military...
, the
United States Department of DefenseThe United States Department of Defense is the federal department charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government relating directly to national security and the military...
Advanced Research Projects Agency. He would then convince
Ivan SutherlandIvan Edward Sutherland is an American computer scientist and Internet pioneer. He received the Turing Award in 1988 for the invention of Sketchpad, an early predecessor to the sort of graphical user interface that has become ubiquitous in personal computers.-Biography:Sutherland earned his...
,
Bob TaylorRobert W. Taylor . Taylor was a, arguably the, major figure in the development of the Internet, the personal computer, and the technologies that support the computer revolution worldwide....
, and Lawrence G. Roberts that an all-encompassing computer network was a very important concept. During his two-year term of office, he granted funding to develop Project MAC at MIT, a large
mainframeMainframes are computers used mainly by large organizations for critical applications, typically bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term probably had originated from the early mainframes, as...
computer that was designed to be shared by up to 30 simultaneous users, each sitting at a separate
typewriterA typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with a set of "keys" that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper...
terminal. He also granted funding to similar projects at
Stanford UniversityThe Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university located in Stanford, California, United States...
, UCLA, UC Berkeley, and the
System Development CorporationSystem Development Corporation , based in Santa Monica, California, was arguably the world's first computer software company.SDC started in 1955 as the systems engineering group for the SAGE air defense ground system at the RAND Corporation...
, all in
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
, and to the
Augmentation Research CenterStanford Research Institute's Augmentation Research Center was founded by electrical engineer Douglas Engelbart to develop and experiment with new tools and techniques for collaboration and information processing. The main product to come out of ARC was the revolutionary oN-Line System, better...
at the Stanford Research Institute, headed by Douglas Englebart, who later invented the computer mouse.
Publications
Licklider has written several articles and books:
- 1942. An Electrical Investigation of Frequency-Localization in the Auditory Cortex of the Cat. Ph.D. Thesis University of Rochester 194.2
- 1965. Libraries of the future. Cambridge, Mass., M.I.T. Press
Articles, a selection:
Further reading
- M. Mitchell Waldrop (2001) The Dream Machine : J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal ISBN 0-670-89976-3 is an extensive biography of J.C.R. Licklider.
- Katie Hafner & Matthew Lyon (1998) Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet, Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin, and HarperCollins...
. ISBN 0-684-83267-4.
- Man-Computer Symbiosis paper, J.C.R. Licklider, March 1960.
- Augmenting Human Intellect paper, Douglas Engelbart, October 1962.
- Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider, Libraries of the Future. Cambridge, MA, 1965.
- The Computer as a Communication Device - This also includes a .pdf version of the Man-Computer Symbiosis paper.
- Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing
Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing is a documentary film from 1972, produced by Steven King, about ARPANET. It features many of the most important names in computer networking.Speaking parts:...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4989933629762859961 video documentary, 1972. Licklider explains online resource sharing, about 10 minutes into the documentary, and reappears throughout.
- From World Brain to the World Wide Web, Lecture by Martin Campbell-Kelly
Martin Campbell-Kelly is an English computer scientist based at the University of Warwick who has specialised in the history of computing.Campbell-Kelly is a full professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Warwick. He is on the editorial board of the IEEE Annals of the...
at Gresham CollegeGresham College is an unusual institution of higher learning off Holborn in central London. It enrolls no students and grants no degrees. The Collège de France offers perhaps a Parisian equivalent....
, 9 November 2006.
- Seeding Networks: the Federal Role, Larry Press, Communications of the ACM
Communications of the ACM is the flagship monthly journal of the Association for Computing Machinery . First published in 1957, CACM is sent to all ACM members, currently numbering about 80,000. The articles are intended for readers with backgrounds in all areas of computer science and information...
, pp 11–18, Vol 39., No 10, October, 1996. A survey of US government funded research and development preceding and including the National Science FoundationThe National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
backbone and international connections programs.
- Before the Altair — The History of Personal Computing, Larry Press, Communications of the ACM, September, 1993, Vol 36, No 9, pp 27–33. A survey of research and development leading to the personal computer including Licklider's contributions.
External links
- J.C.R. Licklider And The Universal Network — Living Internet
- Oral history interview with J. C. R. Licklider at Charles Babbage Institute
The Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking.-Activities:...
, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Licklider, the first director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency's (ARPA) Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), discusses his work at Lincoln Laboratory and IPTO.
- Oral history interview with Robert E. Kahn at Charles Babbage Institute
The Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking.-Activities:...
, University of MinnesotaThe University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States...
, Minneapolis, USA. Kahn discusses the work of various DARPA and IPTO personnel including J. C. R. Licklider.