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Frank Heart

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Not to be confused withFrank Hart.
Frank Heart
Ten computer engineers pose for a 1969 black-and-white photo
IMP Team (left to right): Truett Thatch, Bill Bartell, Dave Walden, Jim Geisman, Robert Kahn, Frank Heart, Ben Barker, Marty Thorpe,Will Crowther,and Severo Ornstein
Born
Frank Evans Heart

(1929-05-15)May 15, 1929
New York City, U.S.
DiedJune 24, 2018(2018-06-24)(aged 89)
Le xing ton, Massachusetts,U.S.
Alma materMassachusetts Institute of Technology
OccupationComputer engineer
Employers
Known forCo-designing theIMP
Spouse
Jane Sundgaard
​
​
(m.1959; died 2014)​
Children3
AwardsInternet Hall of Fame(2014)

Frank Evans Heart(1929–2018) was an Americancomputer engineerinfluential incomputer networking.After nearly 15 years working forMIT Lincoln Laboratory,Heart worked forBolt, Beranek and Newmanfrom 1966 to 1994, during which he led a team that designed the firstroutingcomputer for theARPANET,the predecessor to theInternet.

Background

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Born to aJewishfamily inThe Bronx,New York City, Heart grew up inYonkers.[1][2]His father was an engineer at theOtis Elevator Company;his mother was an insurance agent.[2][3]

Entering as anelectrical engineeringmajor, Heart enrolled at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT) in 1947, entering a five-year master's degree program which he alternated semesters between work and school. During one summer, he worked as a power transformer tester at aGeneral Electricfactory.[3]In 1951, he enrolled in MIT's new computer programming course taught byGordon Welchman.[3]Taking the course led Heart to complete his undergraduate coursework early.[3]During his graduate studies, Heart was a research assistant onWhirlwind I,a computer that controlled an aircraft-tracking radar defense system; Whirlwind would be transferred to theMIT Lincoln Laboratory,the on-campus military contractor.[4][2]Heart received both bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering in 1952.[2]

Career

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At Lincoln Lab, Heart remained as a staff member after completing his master's degree. Eventually, Heart became a team lead for projects in building real-time computing systems where measuring devices gathered data by phone lines connected to computers.[5]Katie Hafnerand Matthew Lyon wrote about Heart's management style in their 1996 bookWhere Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet:

Heart liked working with small, tightly knit groups composed of very bright people. He believed that individual productivity and talent varied not by factors of two or three, but by factors of ten or a hundred. Because Heart had a knack for spotting engineers who could make things happen, the groups he had supervised at Lincoln tended to be unusually productive.[6]

In 1966, Heart left Lincoln Lab after being recruited byresearch and developmentcompanyBolt, Beranek and Newman(BBN).[7]In August 1968, BBN won arequest for proposalfromARPAto build the firstInterface Message Processor(IMP), a computer that transmitted data and interconnected a network known today as arouter.Jerry Elkindassigned Heart to be project manager.[8]

WithSevero Ornsteinas hardware lead andWill Crowtherthe software lead, Heart's team of ten engineers used aruggedHoneywell DDP-516minicomputerto engineer the IMP, whose special function was to switch data among the computers on the ARPANET.[9][2]The team also invented remote diagnostics for computers by equipping IMPs with remote control capabilities.[10]By September 6, 1968, Heart's team finalized the nearly 200-page, $100,000 IMP proposal, which was BBN's most expensive project to date.[11]The first IMP was installed at theUniversity of California, Los Angeleson September 1,Labor Dayof 1969, and the second was installed at theStanford Research InstituteinMenlo Park, California,a month later on October 1.[12]

Heart, wrote Hafner and Lyon, had become "a highly regarded and valuable project manager" at BBN, because his teams had members "committed to a common mission rather than a personal agenda" and "who took personal responsibility for what they did."[13]Influenced by working at Lincoln Lab forJay Forrester,the inventor ofcore memory,Heart prioritized reliability over cost, performance, or other factors, being "a most defensive driver when it came to engineering."[14]He also preferred that his programming teams code working products rather than simulations or software tools.[15]By 1971, Heart's IMP team had grown to 30 and transitioned to a lighterHoneywell 316for the IMP.[16]

In 1972, Heart appeared in the ARPANET documentaryComputer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing.

In 1989, the federal government decommissioned ARPANET. Most of the IMPs were disassembled; a few remain in museums and computer labs. However, many of Heart's core principles, such as reliability anderror detection and correction,still exist within the Internet.[2]Heart's final position at BBN was as president of the systems and technology division; he would retire from BBN by the summer of 1994.[17]

In 2014, Heart was inducted into theInternet Hall of Fame.

Personal life

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While working at Lincoln Laboratory, Heart met Jane Sundgaard, one of the company's first women programmers.[18]They married in 1959 and had three children, and the family lived inLincoln, Massachusetts,during Heart's career at BBN.[2][19]Jane Heart died in 2014.[18]On June 24, 2018, Frank Heart died ofmelanomaat age 89 in a retirement community inLe xing ton, Massachusetts.[2]

Notes

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  1. ^Hafner & Lyon 1998,p. 87
  2. ^abcdefghHafner, Katie (June 25, 2018)."Frank Heart, Who Linked Computers Before the Internet, Dies at 89".The New York Times.Archivedfrom the original on June 27, 2018.RetrievedMarch 7,2020.
  3. ^abcdHafner & Lyon 1998,p. 88
  4. ^Hafner & Lyon 1998,pp. 88–89
  5. ^Hafner & Lyon 1998,pp. 89–90
  6. ^Hafner & Lyon 1998,p. 95
  7. ^Hafner & Lyon 1998,pp. 91, 265
  8. ^Hafner & Lyon 1998,pp. 75, 91
  9. ^Hafner & Lyon 1998,pp. 95, 97–98
  10. ^Hafner & Lyon 1998,p. 162
  11. ^Hafner & Lyon 1998,p. 100
  12. ^Hafner & Lyon 1998,pp. 103, 151
  13. ^Hafner & Lyon 1998,p. 96
  14. ^Hafner & Lyon 1998,p. 116
  15. ^Hafner & Lyon 1998,p. 131
  16. ^Hafner & Lyon 1998,pp. 168, 171–172
  17. ^Hafner & Lyon 1998,p. 265
  18. ^ab"Obituary: Jane Heart".Legacy.May 7, 2014.RetrievedJune 26,2018.
  19. ^Hafner & Lyon 1998,pp. 107, 122

Bibliography

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