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Elizabeth Feinler

By kribiy
  • Birth

    Born on March 2nd
  • Undergrad Degree

    She graduated from West Liberty State College with an undergraduate degree in chemistry
  • Purdue University

    She enrolled in Purdue University to study biochemistry, more specifically to work at Chemical Abstracts
  • Work Break

    Since she was running low on money, she took a year off to work at Chemical Abstracts, the company she had wanted to work at
  • Fifth Decennial Index

    While working there, she became interested in information management because the company was working on the Fifth Decennial Index
  • Learning About SRI

    While at a meeting of the American Chemical Society, she heard about a group that was being setup at SRI (Scientific Research Institute) which consisted of information experts, and decided to apply for it.
  • Rejected Application

    She was declined for the group because there were no spots open, and she and her roommate decided to go on vacation to europe
  • SRI Acceptance

    2 days before she was planning to leave for Europe, she got a letter from SRI saying that they had a job open.
  • Starting Work at SRI

    She relocated to California and entered Stanford Research Institute’s (SRI) Information department, and ditched biochemistry.
  • Period: to

    Working at SRI

    She worked in the Information Research Center at SRI for 10 years.
  • IRC Leader

    She became the head of the Information Research Center at SRI
  • Doug Left IRC

    Someone she met at the IRC (Doug Engelbart) was working on his system (NLS) when he got a big project from DARPA and left to work on it
  • Joining Doug's Project

    She joined Doug in the project now called ARPANET, with plans to demonstrate it at ICCC (basically show and tell for internet related projects)
  • Internet Resource Handbook

    While working on ARPANET, she was assigned to make a “Resource Handbook for the Internet”
  • Working on the NIC

    She went back to SRI to work on a project for the NIC (basically the infrastructure for the internet back then)
  • Protocol Suite Change

    She worked on the which was to convert everyone’s protocol suite to TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol)
  • Hostname Format

    While working at the NIC, she and a couple of her coworkers came up with a text format for hostnames. This would prove important later.
  • ARPANET Change

    ARPANET became a split network of research and defence information. This was important as the NIC served as the backbone for it.
  • Email

    Email was developed and the NIC started processing those too
  • Hostname Project

    Elizabeth and her team shifted to working on the name project from before
  • The Domain Name System

    The name project was given the name “The Domain Name System”. This system was designed to streamline internet usage by processing each domain on separate servers.
  • Internet Naming Authority

    Her group became the naming authority of the internet. They managed the names of all top level domains (.mil, .gov, .edu, .org, .com, and .us)
  • Period: to

    1989 to Present

    After doing a bit of work for NASA and some other small volunteer work, she published a history of the NIC, and has won many internet awards since.