Donald Davies

The data network at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) came into operation in January 1970. It was the culmination of five years of theoretical research, design and development, and was one of the first packet-switching data communication networks in the world. (It would have been the first, but was just pipped at the post by the ARPAnet. Typical of this country, we gave the idea to the Americans then let them pick up and run with it!)

Roger Scantlebury & Brian Aldous tell the story of Donald Davies, superintendent of the Computer Science Division at NPL in 1965, realising that the existing public telephone network was not suitable for data communication and developing the idea of a network of switching centres based on mini-computers, interconnected by high bit-rate links. He suggested the concept of small ‘packets’ of data to be transmitted and reassembled at the recipients terminal.