Chapter 2 - 5 (слова "песни" присутствуют) | Текст песни

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• Chapter 2
• 5 (слова "песни" присутствуют)

One of the companies that bid to build the ARPAnet was Bolt, Beranek & Newman (BBN) of Cambridge, Massachusetts. BBN was the place where Frank Heart worked, and half the staff had already worked with Larry Roberts at Lincoln Laboratory. Frank Heart gave ARPA's plan to his best programmer, Severo Ornstein. Heart said, 'Why don't you take this home and have a look at it and see what you think?' Ornstein came back the next day and said, 'Well, sure, we could build that if you wanted to. But I can't see why anyone would want it.' Ornstein did see a problem, though: 'BBN's a small company, so we'll have to put in a very, very good bid to win the contract.' 'Of course,' said Frank Heart. 'But what's the problem? We are very, very good, aren't we?' 'Yes,' Ornstein agreed. 'But isn't it a big problem that so many of us know Larry Roberts? He won't want to be seen passing out contracts to his old friends.'
Frank Heart did not agree. 'If the bid is good enough, we'll win,' he said.
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Frank Heart believed that a small company had an advantage in this situation. Unlike IBM or AT&T, BBN could move very quickly. For four weeks Heart and his team worked day and night. Later, some members of the team honestly believed that the work had taken six months, not one. By the time they had finished, their plan was enormously detailed. They had worked out most of the design for the IMPs, using an existing computer from the Honeywell company. They described how the network could be made to work even under heavy loads. And they also discovered that they could make the system run ten times more quickly than ARPA was asking. In the end BBN had only one serious competitor for the ARPAnet contract: the much bigger Raytheon Corporation. But the difference in size persuaded Larry Roberts to choose BBN. W h y BBN and not Raytheon?' Bob Taylor asked him. 'BBN's bid is very good. It's as good as Raytheon's.' 'I agree,' said Bob Taylor. 'But why pick BBN and not Raytheon? Raytheon is bigger.' 'But that's just the problem,' Roberts replied. 'There are too many layers of managers at Raytheon. If something goes wrong, who do I call? At BBN everyone reports to Frank Heart. If there's a problem, I can just phone Frank and tell him to fix it.' 'BBN is a small company.' 'Don't worry. That will make them fast.' Larry Roberts gave the contract to BBN. But the company would need to be fast. It only had nine months to complete the job.
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Frank Heart's team started work at the beginning of 1969, and the job had to be finished by 1 September. No one today knows why BBN was given so little time to build the ARPAnet. 'There probably isn't a reason,' Frank Heart said to his team. 'The government sometimes picks dates without thinking. This one is probably an artificial date picked by the government and picked by Larry Roberts. I don't know why they chose it. I can't see any reason why it has to be that particular day. But that's what it is. That is in the contract and so that's what we've got to do.'