About this Collection
From 1969 to 1974, after completing undergraduate studies at Harvard, Martin Thrope was a member of the team at Bolt Beranek & Newman (BBN) that implemented the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense. The BBN team led by Frank Heart developed the Interface Message Processors (IMPs) which connected host systems to the ARPANET. Thrope connected host systems to the ARPANET, and made key contributions to the ARPANET architecture. Thrope developed a set of diagnostic procedures for producing specific information on line failures for reports of network outages of both IMPs and the phone lines that connected them, to be relayed to the phone company offices responsible for each line. BBN established a Network Control Center (NCC) run by Thrope which used a minicomputer, the NCC host, to analyze IMP status reports, print out alerts, and display the status of each IMP on a set of light panels mounted in wood grain box. For the NCC, Thrope compiled and maintained a comprehensive set of useful reference information on each IMP site and each phone line. In addition to his role in network operations, Thrope also designed and installed specialized interfaces sold by BBN to connect a variety of mainframe host computers to the IMPs at their sites. Toward the end of his time at BBN, he was a member of the team that designed a multiprocessor version of the IMP and its specialized hardware interfaces. After leaving BBN in 1974, Thrope earned his MBA degree from Harvard, followed by various management roles in organizations providing computer based products and services for the retail and financial industries.
Collection Overview
Thrope (Martin) Collection