Elizabeth Feinler and The History of the Internet
“I am proud to have had a small role in the development of the Internet, a technical phenomenon that has changed the way the world learns and communicates.”
Elizabeth “Jake” Feinler is a pioneering information scientist and the former Director of the Network Information Systems Center at the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International), which she joined in 1960 to work in the Information Research Department.
In 1972, Elizabeth joined Doug Engelbart’s Augmentation Research Center (ARC) to work on the ARPANET Resource Handbook. Elizabeth was principal investigator for the Network Information Center (NIC) project from 1974 to 1989. During that time, Elizabeth’s NIC group worked on the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), which evolved into the Defense Data Network (DDN), both forerunners to the Internet .
The NIC provided ARPANET users with various support services, a directory, a resource handbook (list of services), and the DoD protocol handbook. It was also Elizabeth’s group who managed the first host-naming registry for the Internet and developed the top-level domain naming system of .com, .gov, .org, .edu, and .mil, which is still in use today.
