The Airfield and the Think Tank

1923

One airfield. In 1923 the Army dedicated Clover Field, on the edge of a California beach town, and named it for a local pilot killed in the First World War. Donald Douglas was already building aircraft on the site.

1924

Four planes. The U.S. Army Air Service ordered four biplanes from Douglas for something no one had done: a flight around the world. They left Clover Field in March 1924 for the official start at Seattle, then crossed the Pacific by way of Alaska and Japan.

28 Sep 1924

Around the world. One plane hit a mountainside in Alaska, and its crew escaped with minor injuries. Crowds met the others in Paris on Bastille Day. One more came down in the North Atlantic. Two of the first four finished at Seattle on 28 September.

17 Dec 1935

The plane that paid. On 17 December 1935 the first of a new line flew from Clover Field. The DC-3 became the first airliner to fly profitably without government subsidy. In the war that followed, the City says, Douglas employed up to 44,000 workers.

1946

A project inside the plant. As the war ended, General Henry Arnold, Donald Douglas and others set up Project RAND, for long-range planning, in a separate part of the Douglas plant. RAND’s own histories differ on who had the idea, and on whether it began in 1945 or 1946.

2 May 1946

Three weeks. The project’s first job was to design a “world-circling spaceship,” with a three-week deadline. The report of 2 May 1946 put the cost at about $150 million and the time at about five years, and it said what a satellite would do.

1948

On its own. Other companies were reluctant to share their plans with a rival’s project. RAND moved from the plant to offices downtown in 1947 and became an independent nonprofit in 1948, with Frank Collbohm as president and $1 million secured through the Ford Foundation.

1950

A game for two. In early 1950 two RAND mathematicians, Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher, had two colleagues play a game a hundred times in a row. Albert Tucker later told it as a story of two prisoners. It is now known as the prisoner’s dilemma.

4 Oct 1957

Eleven years later. The first satellite was not American. On 4 October 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 from the desert in Kazakhstan, and the shock in the United States led to NASA and to ARPA. Nothing here shows that the 1946 report led to any of it.

1958

Strike second. In 1958 Albert Wohlstetter of RAND wrote that nuclear deterrence was not automatic. One old bomb, he said, might destroy a great many modern jets and missiles on the ground. What counted was what would be left after a surprise attack.

1964

No center. Paul Baran joined RAND in 1959. To answer an attack, or to stop a war, he reasoned, leaders would need a network that survived it. A network with a center dies with its center, so his had none: only nodes, each tied to its neighbors.

1964

In blocks. Every message would be cut into blocks of perhaps 1,024 bits, each finding its own way across about three times the links strictly needed. Baran called them message blocks. Donald Davies in Britain, working independently, gave them their name: packets.

1966

No, thanks. In Baran’s telling, the Air Force offered AT&T the money and AT&T refused. By 1966 the job was to go to the Defense Communications Agency. Baran expected it to fail, and says he stopped the plan himself. It was never built.

29 Oct 1969

Two letters. ARPA paid for a different network, to let researchers share computers. At 22:30 on 29 October 1969, at UCLA, a few miles from RAND, a student tried to log in to a computer at the Stanford Research Institute. The full login worked about an hour later.

1969

What the builders say. It is often said that the ARPANET was built to survive a nuclear war. Its builders call that a false rumor. In their history, the work at MIT, at RAND and at Britain’s National Physical Laboratory ran in parallel, each unaware of the others.

1969

What Baran says. Baran agreed: “I didn’t do the ARPANET. That was Larry Roberts.” But he said Roberts had seen the RAND reports, and his calendar notes Roberts at noon on 28 February 1967, months before the conference where the builders’ history has him told of it. What they discussed is not recorded.

1 Oct 1969

The safe. In 1967 Defense Secretary Robert McNamara ordered a secret history of the United States in Vietnam. RAND held two sets. On 1 October 1969, RAND’s history says, its analyst Daniel Ellsberg took volumes from his office safe and, with Anthony Russo’s help, began to copy them.

30 Jun 1971

The court. The New York Times began publishing on 13 June 1971, and the government asked the courts to stop it. On 30 June the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that the government had not met its burden. The papers were free to go on publishing.

11 May 1973

The case ends. Ellsberg, then Russo, were charged in Los Angeles. A charge is an accusation, not a finding of guilt. During the trial it came out that a special unit, reporting to the White House, had broken into his psychiatrist’s office. On 11 May 1973 the judge dismissed all charges.

1975

Leaving. Jet work had already gone to Long Beach, after the City declined to lengthen the runway. Douglas merged with McDonnell in 1967 and left the airport in 1975. Its plant came down in 1977. RAND stayed in Santa Monica.

2026

Last call. The field that saw four biplanes off is due to close at midnight on 31 December 2028, and the City is planning a park. What came out of this town went many separate ways. Every step here shows its proof, and a connection is not evidence of influence.

Explore from here