Elizabeth Jocelyn "Jake" Feinler (born March 2, 1931) is an American information scientist. From 1972 until 1989 she was director of the Network Information Systems Center at the
Stanford Research Institute
SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic d ...
(SRI International). Her group operated the
Network Information Center
The Network Information Center (NIC), also known as InterNIC from 1993 until 1998, was the organization primarily responsible for Domain Name System (DNS) domain name allocations and X.500 directory services. From its inception in 1972 until Oc ...
(NIC) for the
ARPANET
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...
as it evolved into the
Defense Data Network The Defense Data Network (DDN) was a computer networking effort of the United States Department of Defense from 1983 through 1995. It was based on ARPANET technology.
History
As an experiment, from 1971 to 1977, the Worldwide Military Command an ...
(DDN) and the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
.
Early life and education
Feinler was born on March 2, 1931 in
Wheeling, West Virginia
Wheeling is a city in the U.S. state of West Virginia. Located almost entirely in Ohio County, of which it is the county seat, it lies along the Ohio River in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and also contains a tiny portion extending ...
, where she also grew up.
In 1954, she received an undergraduate degree from
West Liberty State College
West Liberty University (WLU) is a public university in West Liberty, West Virginia. It is West Virginia's oldest institution of higher education. It offers more than 70 undergraduate majors plus graduate programs, including a master's degree i ...
, the first from her family to attend college.
Career
Early career
She was working toward a
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
in
biochemistry
Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...
from
Purdue University
Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money ...
when she decided to earn some money by working for a year or two before starting on her thesis. Working at the
Chemical Abstracts Service
CAS (formerly Chemical Abstracts Service) is a division of the American Chemical Society. It is a source of chemical information. CAS is located in Columbus, Ohio, United States.
Print periodicals
''Chemical Abstracts'' is a periodical index tha ...
in
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus () is the state capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Ohio. With a 2020 census population of 905,748, it is the 14th-most populous city in the U.S., the second-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago, and t ...
, she served as an assistant editor on a huge project to index the world's chemical compounds. There she became intrigued with the challenges of creating such large data compilations and never returned to biochemistry. Instead, in 1960, she relocated to
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
and joined the Information Research Department at the
Stanford Research Institute
SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic d ...
(now SRI International) where she worked to develop the ''Handbook of Psychopharmacology'' and the ''Chemical Process Economics Handbook''.
ARPANET and NIC
Feinler was leading the Literature Research section of SRI's library when, in 1972,
Doug Engelbart
Douglas Carl Engelbart (January 30, 1925 – July 2, 2013) was an American engineer and inventor, and an early computer and Internet pioneer. He is best known for his work on founding the field of human–computer interaction, particularly ...
recruited her to join his
Augmentation Research Center
SRI International's Augmentation Research Center (ARC) was founded in the 1960s by electrical engineer Douglas Engelbart to develop and experiment with new tools and techniques for collaboration and information processing.
The main product to come ...
(ARC), which was sponsored by the
Information Processing Techniques Office
The Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), originally "Command and Control Research",Lyon, Matthew; Hafner, Katie (1999-08-19). ''Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet'' (p. 39). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. was par ...
of the US
Defense Advanced Research Project Agency
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military.
Originally known as the Ad ...
(DARPA). Her first task was to write a ''Resource Handbook'' for the first demonstration of the
ARPANET
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical fou ...
at the International Computer Communication Conference. By 1974 she was the principal investigator to help plan and run the new Network Information Center (NIC) for the ARPANET.
The NIC provided reference service to users (initially over the phone and by physical mail), maintained and published a directory of people (the "white pages"), a resource handbook (the "yellow pages", a list of services) and the protocol handbook. After the Network Operations Center at
Bolt, Beranek and Newman
Raytheon BBN (originally Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.) is an American research and development company, based next to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.
In 1966, the Franklin Institute awarded the firm the Frank P. Brown ...
brought new hosts onto the network, the NIC registered names, provided access control for terminals, audit trail and billing information, and distributed Request for Comments (RFCs). Feinler, working with
Steve Crocker,
Jon Postel,
Joyce Reynolds and other members of the Network Working Group (NWG), developed RFCs into the official set of technical notes for the ARPANET and later the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
. The NIC provided the first links to on-line documents using the
NLS Journal system developed at ARC.
Engelbart continued leading-edge research in the ARC, while the NIC provided a service to all network users. This led to establishing the NIC as a separate project with Feinler as manager.
The NWG and Feinler's team defined a simple text file format for host names in 1974, and revised the format several times as the networks evolved. The host table itself was continuously updated on almost a daily basis. In 1975, the
Defense Communication Agency (DCA) took operational control and support, and over time split the ARPANET into research and military networks. DCA used the name
Defense Data Network The Defense Data Network (DDN) was a computer networking effort of the United States Department of Defense from 1983 through 1995. It was based on ARPANET technology.
History
As an experiment, from 1971 to 1977, the Worldwide Military Command an ...
to refer to the combination, and the NIC served as its information center. When
e-mail
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...
and the
File Transfer Protocol
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...
(FTP) became available around 1976, the NIC used them to deliver information to users via the network.
In 1977, Postel moved to the
Information Sciences Institute
The USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI) is a component of the University of Southern California (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering, and specializes in research and development in information processing, computing, and communications techno ...
, and the RFC editor and number assignment functions moved with him, while the NIC stayed at SRI. By 1979, Feinler and her group were working on ways to scale up the name service. In 1982, an Internet protocol was defined by Ken Harrenstien and Vic White in her group to access the online directory of people, called
Whois
WHOIS (pronounced as the phrase "who is") is a query and response protocol that is widely used for querying databases that store the registered users or assignees of an Internet resource, such as a domain name, an IP address block or an autonomou ...
. As the Internet expanded, the
Domain Name System
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to ...
was designed to handle the growth by delegating naming authority to distributed name servers. Her group became the overall naming authority of the Internet, developing and managing the
name registries of the
top-level domain
A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in ...
s of
.mil
,
.gov
,
.edu
,
.org
, and
.com
. Even the names of the top-level domains, based on generic categories such as
.com
were suggestions of the NIC team, approved by the Internet developer community.
Later career
After Feinler left SRI, in 1989, she worked as a network requirements manager and helped develop guidelines for managing the NASA Science Internet (NSI) NIC at the
NASA Ames Research Center
The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laborat ...
.
Feinler donated an extensive collection of early Internet papers to the
Computer History Museum
The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact on ...
in
Mountain View, California
Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376.
Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is the ...
and after she retired from NASA in 1996 worked as a volunteer at the museum to organize the material.
She published a history of the NIC in 2010. In 2012, Feinler was inducted into the
Internet Hall of Fame
The Internet Hall of Fame is an honorary lifetime achievement award administered by the Internet Society (ISOC) in recognition of individuals who have made significant contributions to the development and advancement of the Internet. by the
Internet Society
The Internet Society (ISOC) is an American nonprofit advocacy organization founded in 1992 with local chapters around the world. Its mission is "to promote the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people ...
. In July, 2013 she received
the Jonathan B. Postel Service Award "for her contributions to the early development and administration of the Internet through her leadership of the Network Information Center (NIC) for the ARPANET".
Retirement
At the turn of the 21st century, Feinler was inducted into th
SRI Alumni Hall of Fame In retirement she consistetly volunteers at the
Computer History Museum
The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a museum of computer history, located in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the information age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact on ...
located in Mountain View, California. Feinler describes her role at CHM:
"Over the years, while running the Network Information Center (NIC) on the Internet, I collected close to 1500 shelf feet of papers pertaining to the Internet. Currently I am working as a volunteer at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View to organize these papers. I am also writing a Finding Aid to assist scholars who may want to use the collection. It will describe the contents, significance, and organization scheme of the collection. While most in Silicon Valley are charging ahead, I can safely say I am going backwards. :-) If you haven't been to the museum, check it out. It has a great collection of artifacts, exhibits and documents. In May the Babbage Machine exhibit opens. Who can resist a computer with 8,000 mechanical moving parts!!!!"
Nickname
Feinler explains how she got her nickname, "Jake":
When I was born, double name
A given name (also known as a forename or first name) is the part of a personal name quoted in that identifies a person, potentially with a middle name as well, and differentiates that person from the other members of a group (typically a fa ...
s were popular. My real name is Elizabeth Jocelyn Feinler, and my family was going to call me Betty Jo to match my sister’s name, Mary Lou. Only two at the time, my sister’s version of Betty Jo sounded like Baby Jake. I always say, Thank goodness they dropped the "Baby".
References
External links
Elizabeth Feinler's bibliographyfrom dblp: Computer Science Bibliography
"Internet History 1969" web pages, Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA, USA
MouseSite Photo Gallery, Science and Technology in the Making (STIM) web site, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
* Video of interview.
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Feinler, Elizabeth Jocelyn
Internet pioneers
Women Internet pioneers
Living people
People from Wheeling, West Virginia
Purdue University alumni
SRI International people
West Liberty University alumni
1931 births
21st-century American chemists
American women chemists
Scientists from West Virginia
20th-century American women
21st-century American women scientists