Submission + - Paul Baran, packet switching inventor, dies (networkworld.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Paul Baran, whose Cold War era invention of packet switching technology helped to lay the foundation for the Internet, has died at the age of 84. A native of Poland whose family moved to Philadelphia when he was a youngster, Baran developed his concept of a survivable store-and-forward communications network while at RAND Corp.in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis. That concept of packet switching, a digital communications method involving the movement of data divvied up into what Baran called "message blocks" over shared and distributed networks, later found its way into the ARPANET, which evolved into the Internet.