Elizabeth J. Feinler facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler
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Jake Feinler, c. 2011
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Elizabeth Jocelyn Feinler
March 2, 1931 Wheeling, West Virginia, U.S.
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| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | West Liberty State College and Purdue University |
| Known for | Running the original ARPANET NIC at SRI |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer science |
| Institutions | SRI, NASA Ames, Computer History Museum |
Elizabeth Jocelyn "Jake" Feinler, born on March 2, 1931, is an American expert in information science. From 1972 to 1989, she led the Network Information Systems Center at SRI International. Her team managed the Network Information Center (NIC) for the ARPANET. This network later grew into the Internet we use today.
Contents
Early Life and Learning
Jake Feinler was born and grew up in Wheeling, West Virginia, on March 2, 1931. In 1954, she earned her first college degree from West Liberty State College. She was the first person in her family to go to college.
Career Journey
Starting Out in Science
Feinler was studying to get her Ph.D. in biochemistry at Purdue University. She decided to take a break to work for a year or two. She worked at the Chemical Abstracts Service in Columbus, Ohio. There, she helped edit a huge project to list all the world's chemical compounds.
She found this work very interesting. It showed her the challenges of organizing large amounts of data. Because of this, she never went back to biochemistry. Instead, in 1960, she moved to California. She joined the Information Research Department at the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International). She helped create important handbooks there.
Building the ARPANET and NIC
In 1972, Jake Feinler was leading a research section at SRI's library. Doug Engelbart asked her to join his Augmentation Research Center (ARC). This center was supported by the US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA). Her first job was to write a guide for the first public demonstration of the ARPANET.
By 1974, she was in charge of planning and running the new Network Information Center (NIC) for the ARPANET.
What the NIC Did
The NIC helped ARPANET users in many ways.
- They answered questions, first by phone and mail.
- They kept a directory of people, like a "white pages" phone book.
- They published a "yellow pages" guide listing network services.
- They also managed a handbook for network rules and protocols.
When new computers joined the network, the NIC registered their names. They also controlled who could access terminals and kept track of network use. The NIC also shared important technical notes called Requests for Comments (RFCs).
Feinler worked with Steve Crocker, Jon Postel, and Joyce Reynolds to make RFCs the official technical documents for ARPANET. Later, these became important for the Internet too. The NIC was also the first to link to online documents.
Doug Engelbart continued his advanced research at ARC. Meanwhile, the NIC focused on providing services to all network users. This led to the NIC becoming its own separate project, with Feinler as its manager.
Naming and Growing the Network
Feinler's team and the Network Working Group (NWG) created a simple way to list computer names in 1974. They updated this list almost every day as the network grew.
In 1975, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DCA) took over running the network. They split the ARPANET into research and military networks. The DCA called this combined network the Defense Data Network. The NIC served as its main information center.
When e-mail and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) became available around 1976, the NIC used them. This helped them deliver information to users faster. In 1977, Jon Postel moved to another institute. The job of editing RFCs and assigning numbers went with him. But the NIC stayed at SRI.
By 1979, Feinler and her team were looking for ways to handle even more names. In 1982, her group created a new Internet protocol called Whois. This allowed people to look up information in the online directory.
As the Internet grew, the Domain Name System (DNS) was created. This system helped manage the growth by letting different servers handle parts of the naming. Feinler's group became the main authority for naming on the Internet. They developed and managed the name registries for important top-level domains. These included `.mil` (military), `.gov` (government), `.edu` (education), `.org` (organizations), and `.com` (commercial). Even the ideas for these general categories, like `.com`, came from the NIC team. The Internet community approved these ideas.
After SRI
After leaving SRI in 1989, Jake Feinler worked at the NASA Ames Research Center. She helped manage network needs and create guidelines for NASA's own network information center.
Feinler gave many of her early Internet papers to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. After she retired from NASA in 1996, she volunteered at the museum. She helped organize these important historical documents.
In 2010, she published a book about the history of the NIC. In 2012, the Internet Society added Feinler to the Internet Hall of Fame. In 2013, she received the Jonathan B. Postel Service Award. This award recognized her important work in developing and managing the early Internet through her leadership of the NIC.
Retirement and Volunteering
Around the year 2000, Feinler was honored by being added to the SRI Alumni Hall of Fame. In her retirement, she continues to volunteer at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
Feinler has collected nearly 1500 shelf feet of papers about the Internet. She is organizing these papers at the museum. She is also writing a guide to help scholars use her collection. She jokes that while most people in Silicon Valley are moving forward, she is going backward by organizing history! She encourages everyone to visit the museum.
How She Got Her Nickname
Feinler explained how she got her nickname, "Jake." When she was born, it was popular to have two names. Her real name is Elizabeth Jocelyn Feinler. Her family planned to call her Betty Jo, like her sister Mary Lou. But her sister, who was only two at the time, pronounced Betty Jo as "Baby Jake." Feinler says she is glad they dropped the "Baby"!
See also
In Spanish: Elizabeth J. Feinler para niños
