How the Internet came to be, with its myriad applications and implications for the future, is a story usually told in triumphant terms. The Licklider vision; the fervor of his disciples; the dedication of computer scientists and electrical engineers; the sweat of a small number of graduate students; the faith of the Advanced Research Projects Agency seeking to avoid technological surprise; and the apparently unbounded attraction of the ARPANET to its early participants carries with it a sense of its inevitable success in the marketplace of computer users. But networking was not quite the "slam dunk" that now-discredited phrase might imply. The path to the eventual success of networking was strewn with obstacles that had to be overcome. In the interest of supplementing the technical history by illuminating the points of resistance, one can perhaps more fully appreciate the survival of the infant.

Dr. Lukasik received a B.S. in physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His early research at Stevens Institute of Technology was on the physics of fluids and plasmas. While a member of the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), he was responsible for research in support of nuclear test ban negotiations and subsequently served from 1967