In 1953 the physicist Enrico Fermi, who had studied at the Scuola Normale di Pisa and still had strong ties with the city’s physicists, wrote to Enrico Avanzi, rector of the University of Pisa, to advocate for the construction of a state-of-the-art calculating machine – a necessary tool for scientists conducting research in the city.
Between 1955 and 1958, the CEP (Electronic Calculator of Pisa) project was born. First a “small machine” was built (a prototype meant to serve as a test) and finally, on 13 November 1961, Italian President Giovanni Gronchi inaugurated the final form.
At the same time, in the Olivetti laboratory in Pisa, the first calculating machine for commercial use (the Elea 9001) was taking shape, also as a result of the fruitful exchange with the CEP’s CSCE (Centre for Study of Electronic Calculators). Pisa was the heart of computing research in Italy.
The United States Department of Defense launched DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), a research financing programme to develop defence technology solutions. This was the US government’s response to the launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik I in late 1957, and to the fear that the USSR would make a decisive leap forward in weapons technology.
One of the first projects funded by ARPA was research in computer networking, which would be of vital importance for exchanging information between American research centres, and also very useful in case of war.
The project was called ARPANET.
On 5 July an agreement between IBM Italia and the University of Pisa was signed, and thus CNUCE, the National University Centre of Electronic Calculation, was established. It was headquartered in Via Santa Maria, a short walk from the Tower of Pisa, next to the building that housed the CEP and in front of IBM’s Scientific Centre.
The University of Pisa created the first major in Computer Science in Italy, affiliated with CSCE and CNUCE, which in fact were to become the research laboratory for the programme.
29 October: The day when, for the first time in history, a message was transmitted between two computers. One was located in Leonard Kleinrock’s laboratory at UCLA (Los Angeles) and the other in the Stanford Research Institute in Palo Alto (San Francisco). With the project’s success, by the end of the year the network had been extended to two other computers, one at the University of Santa Barbara and the other at the University of Utah. In March 1970 the network crossed America to connect to the East Coast as well. By 1971 there were 13 computers connected, 46 by 1976 and 213 at the end of 1981.
Beginning in late 1973, two CNUCE researchers and two from IBM’s Scientific Centre in Pisa spent a few months at IBM in Cambridge (Massachusetts, USA), to study the American networks and the systems for exchanging data between computers. At the same time, Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf were developing TCP/IP protocol, the method of transferring data in “packets”. This is the network protocol which the Internet still uses today, but it would take nearly 10 years to become the standard.
CNUCE became CNR. Alessandro Faedo, former director of CNUCE, worked to see the Centre become an Institute of the National Research Council (CNR), of which he is now President. The agreement, signed by Faedo and by Rector Vincenzo Palazzolo called for the new Institute to maintain the relationship with IBM already established by the University and to “carry out studies, research and applied computer science and data processing projects”, and also to support the University’s teaching.
Starting in 1974, CNUCE and IBM Pisa participated in the REEL (network of computers) project, which gave rise to RPCNet (REEL Project Computer Network), an experiment in networking between computers in CNR’s laboratories in Turin, Milan, Pisa, Florence, Rome and Frascati, plus two non-CNR locations, the INFN laboratory in San Piero a Grado and the University of Palermo’s CED. RPCNet used packet switching, the same network architecture model used by ARPANET, which makes it possible to send files and emails. On 22 October 1976, CNUCE researchers presented the project at a press conference in Venice. RPCNet was the first national packet switching network entirely developed in Italy, and its design helped CNUCE acquire some of the most advanced skills in network technology.
The STELLA (Satellite Transmission Experiment Linking Laboratories) project was launched in Europe. It was the first attempt on this side of the ocean to create a packet network via satellite. The experiment got its start (and its funding) from CERN in Geneva. Physicists studying elementary particles needed a way to quickly share the large amount of data generated by their research with other laboratories in Europe.
The labs connected by STELLA were the CERN, the INFN of Pisa and Frascati, Rutherford in England, DESY in Germany, University College Dublin and the Graz University of Technology. Because of CNUCE’s experience with network architecture, INFN brought CNUCE on board for the planning of all the technical aspects of the network.
In October 1983, in Pisa, the project’s results were presented to the scientific community, with a “live” connection during an experiment at CERN.
CNUCE contacted Robert Kahn to officially request that Pisa become an ARPANET node. The work began: preparing the software and hardware platform, designed along with Kahn. With the research, red tape and technical changes, it took five years to complete the task. Kahn also helped CNUCE to get the innovative butterfly gateway, the router required for the connection, which was donated to CNR by the US Department of Defense.
CNUCE decided to launch Progetto OSIRIDE, an experiment in networking between CNR computing centres and those of Italian universities. It used OSI architecture and protocols, the international standard for network connections, which RPCNet was not yet using (a standard parallel to Kahn and Cerf’s TCP/IP). This was another step forward in network management for CNUCE researchers; each of these projects and the skills that came with them were crucial to making Pisa the best choice for “switching on” the first Italian internet node.
Experiments on OSI standards stopped after 1986, when it became evident that TCP/IP, which in the meantime had become the ARPANET protocol standard, had gained the upper hand and that the internet was most likely the future of network connections.
CNUCE connected to EARN (European Academic Research Network), a network connection system for transferring files. EARN actually had a much less sophisticated architecture than the other experiments CNUCE researchers were carrying out, but it was important for three reasons: it brought a new set of skills to the work group and it established CNUCE as the national coordinator of the project but most of all, in terms of culture, it showed Italian academics, even those other fields, the importance of networks. EARN would also be used in the humanities, helping computer networks to be seen not only as a “game” for computer scientists, but as a fundamental tool for all scholars.
30 April. “Ping”, “OK”: This simple exchange took just over a second with a 64kb connection between CNUCE in Pisa and Telespazio in Fucino, bounced via antenna to the Intelsat V satellite and from there to Roaring Creek, Pennsylvania. The connection with ARPANET was established. It was the first in Italy and the fourth in Europe after England, Norway and Germany. It was no more than an instant, but it represented the culmination of over 10 years of work at CNUCE, fine-tuning its expertise in computer networking systems. From that moment on, Pisa and Italy were connected to the ARPANET network. Within a few years, that first node was followed by the many other connections of those pioneers of the history of the internet in Italy.
The NIC (Network Information Center) at the SRI placed CNUCE of Pisa in charge of managing the ‘.it’ ccTLD, the tree of Italian internet domains. The University of Genoa was actually the first in Italy to make the request; the University of Pisa followed suit a few days later. The United States asked Italian researchers to come to an agreement and in the end CNUCE was assigned the role because of the experience and skills it had developed connecting to ARPANET the year before.
Cnuce.cnr.it was born, the first Italian domain name.
CNUCE, with all its relevant experience, participated in the 1980s in the creation of GARR (Group for Research Network Harmonization), which today, under the name Consortium GARR (founding members CRUI, CNR, ENEA and INFN and sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research), provides high-performance connectivity and advanced services to the Italian academic and research community.
CNUCE was dissolved to create IAT (Institute for Telematic Applications), which later became IIT (Institute for Informatics and Telematics) and part of ISTI (Institute of Information Science and Technology). Within these institutions, CNR continues its research on networks and the internet of the future.
Thirty years ago, on 30 April 1986, researchers and technicians of CNUCE of Pisa first connected a computer on Italian soil to the ARPANET network, the initial core of the Internet. That day was the culmination of long years of study and experimentation on computer networking and satellite connections: the set of skills that made Italy the fourth European nation to connect to the American network, after Great Britain, Norway and Germany.
It was because of this experience that CNUCE was assigned to manage the Registry of domain names in the Italian ccTLD, .it, a service still provided today by the Institute of Informatics and Telematics of the CNR in Pisa.
“Therefore, 29 April will be Internet Day: a day to celebrate together the meaning of the revolution that began 30 years ago and to make a commitment to bridging the digital divide in the next four years.”
With these words, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi launched the Italian Internet Day celebrations: a day to remember the pioneers of CNUCE of Pisa who in 1986 connected Italy to the Internet, and a day to look forward, to new ultra-wideband infrastructure, to ICT research and innovation, to digital skills in schools and businesses and to digitalized government services.
Internet Festival 2016 will take place from 6 to 9 October in Pisa. As part of the 2016 Festival programme, Registro.it, co-founder of the event along with the Region of Tuscany, the Municipality of Pisa, the University of Pisa, Scuola Normale Superiore, Scuola Sant’Anna and the Chamber of Commerce, will present a series of events connected to the celebration of thirty years of Italian internet.
The Festival programme will be presented in September 2016.
