Jim McKie
lorenetworking
Member of the Amsterdam team that put Europe on Usenet, who in 1982 told the continent's Unix users that the Mathematical Centre would call anyone, and who later worked at Bell Labs on Plan 9, the successor to Unix.
The first link across the Atlantic, from Digital's decvax to Amsterdam's mcvax, was held up into 1982 by something small: an autodialling modem that satisfied European telephone standards was hard to get. Once it worked, somebody had to tell Europe, and that was McKie. At the European Unix Users Group meeting in Paris in the spring of 1982 the Mathematical Centre announced it was connected to Usenet and would call, or be called by, any group site on the continent - the moment, the record says, that began the transformation of the European Unix community into a networked one. He wrote it up as Where Is Europe for the 1983 Usenix conference in Toronto, and a posting of his from that August survives in the archives, signed mcvax!jim, on the cost of sending news to aliens - the aliens being Europeans, and the cost being the phone bill. He was one of the small team under Hagen, with Akkerhuis, Beertema and Karrenberg, that did the institute's networking. Then he went to the source: Bell Labs lists him among the department that built Plan 9, the system Ritchie, Pike and Thompson's group designed from the late 1980s for a world of networked machines rather than one shared one. He had spent the early eighties making Unix machines talk across an ocean, and spent the next decade at the lab that made Unix, building the system that assumed the network from the start.
Also known as: mckie, where is europe, mcvax!jim
Sources
- Hauben and Hauben, Netizens, chapter 10: Jim McKie, in a draft paper, describes the importance of the Spring 1982 European Unix Users Group meeting in Paris, at which the Mathematisch Centrum in Amsterdam announced that it had connected to Usenet and was willing to call or be called by any EUUG site in Europe - the beginning of a transformation of the Unix community in Europe; his paper Where Is Europe was presented at the 1983 Usenix conference in Toronto; a 3 August 1983 posting from mcvax!jim, Jim McKie, Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam, appears in net.news on the cost of sending netnews to aliens; the first transatlantic Usenet link, decvax to mcvax, was delayed until 1982-83 by the difficulty of obtaining an autodialling modem that met European standards
- Nokia Bell Labs, on Plan 9: the Computing Techniques Research Department that developed Plan 9 included Dennis Ritchie, Dave Presotto, Rob Pike, Tom Killian, Allen Eisdorfer, Tom Duff, Phil Winterbottom, Jim McKie, Howard Trickey and Sean Dorward; the system was developed from the late 1980s to fit an increasingly distributed world
- NLnet: McKie was one of the small team at the Mathematical Centre, led by Teus Hagen with Akkerhuis, Beertema and Karrenberg, that did most of the institute's networking