David Walden dies at 79
Probably many of you the name David Walden will not say anything, but he was an important man in the development of the most used communication tool in the modern world and that you are using to read this news: the Internet. Walden, who unfortunately died on April 27 at the age of 79 at his home in East Sandwich, Massachussetts, was part of a team of ten who contributed to the creation of what is defined as "the network of networks", which would have allowed to machines equipped with different operating systems to communicate and exchange data between them in a completely transparent way.Internet is nothing more than an advanced version of Arpanet (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) of the American Department of Defense and Walken he was part, starting from 1969, of a small group of talented engineers who led to the construction of the Interface Message Processor (IMP), which had the task of exchanging data between the computers connected to the nascent Arpanet. The first MIP was installed in the same year in Los Angeles, at the University of California. The team that Walden was also a part of took nine months of hard work to make the MIP, which we can see as a precursor to the routers we all have at home.
David Walden is third from the left. Behind is the IMP.
David Walden, Computer Scientist at Dawn of Internet, Dies at 79
Mr. Walden eventually enrolled at San Francisco State College (now University) and received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1964. His interest in computing grew from a course he took in numerical analysis that involved working on an IBM computer.
After college, he went to work for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory as a computer programmer in the Space Communications Division.
In 1965, he met Sara Elizabeth Cowles, an education administrator, and they married the next year. He was hired at Bolt Beranek and Newman in 1967. Soon after, the company won a contract to build the first I.M.P.
“It was a very small group working together all the time,” Mr. Walden said in a 1990 interview with the Charles Babbage Institute at the University of Minnesota, an archive and research center specializing in information technology.
“We were in and out of each other’s offices and helping each other debug,” he added.
Every discovery drew excitement. “We’d run in and say, ‘Look, I got this running!’” he said.
Mr. Walden left Bolt Beranek for a year in 1970 to work at Norsk Data, helping that company build a computer modeled after the I.M.P. He returned to Bolt Beranek in 1971 and stayed until 1995. He later became an expert in the field of management. An avid computer historian, he was an editor at the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, published by what was originally the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Although he did not hold an advanced degree, Mr. Walden received an honorary doctorate from California State University in 2014 for his work on the Arpanet. “He remarked to me on more than one occasion that he never thought he would get that kind of honor,” Alex McKenzie, a former colleague of Mr. Walden’s, said in an interview.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Walden is survived by his son, Luke; his brother, Daniel; his sister, Velma Walden Hampson; and two grandchildren.