It is with a heavy heart that I report to Internauts everywhere that one of the early pioneers of the ARPANET and Internet has passed away. Pål Spilling was at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment (NDRE) at a time when an ARPANET node was installed at Kjeller, Norway. The satellite link was shared between the ARPANET and the Norwegian Seismic Array (NORSAR) system that was used to monitor Soviet underground nuclear testing to assure the tests did not exceed the test ban treaty limits. Together with his colleague, Yngvar Lundh, Pål worked to test early Internet implementation and applications including packetized speech. He was ever an enthusiastic participant in the Internet’s evolution and a steadfast research partner at NDRE and the subsequent institutions who were lucky to have him in their midst. He spent time at University College London with Peter Kirstein’s group and also at SRI International testing packet radio and packet speech applications. More about Pål’s work can be found at his Wikipedia site.
I, for one, will miss Pål greatly but remember his workmanlike involvement over many decades. His name can be found on the Stanford Plaque commemorating the early researchers who participated in the earliest development and testing of the TCP/IP protocols in 1973-1976.