Donald Davies

Donald Davies was a British computer scientist at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL). He worked on early computing and became a principal inventor and advocate of packet switching for data communications.

Packets and networks

Davies proposed dividing messages into short packets and routing them through a network of computers. NPL publicly presented these ideas in the late 1960s and built a packet-switched network, work that influenced subsequent networking efforts.

Security relevance

Davies later pursued computer-network security and cryptography as well as network architecture. He belongs in security history because secure communication depends on the protocols, routing systems, and threat assumptions made possible by the packet-network model.

In memoriam

Davies died in 2000. His technical imagination remains visible whenever independent packets traverse a modern network.

Timeline

• 1924-06-07Born in Treorchy, Wales.
• 1947Joins the National Physical Laboratory.
• 1965Originates the packet-switching concept for data communication.
• 1967Presents packet-switching work publicly at the ACM symposium in Gatlinburg.
• 2000-05-28Dies in Esher, England.