In The 1960s, If You Said By The Year 2000 People Would Be Reading News & Buying Goods Online You Were Of The Lunatic Fringe

A true pioneer of the internet, Paul Baran, has died at 86.

This story provides a quick summary of his life and some interesting details about the early days of what we now know as The Internet :

Paul Baran is best known for the idea of "packet-switching", in which data is bundled into small packages and sent through a network. Baran outlined the concept while working on Cold War issues for the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica in 1963 and 1964.

In 1969 the technology became a concept the Department of Defence used in creating the Arpanet, the precursor to the internet, numerous reports on the subject said.

The idea had been so advanced at its development that private companies had passed on it.

Baran's method of moving data was designed to still function after a nuclear attack. Because there were no centralised switches, and bundles of data could simply find a new route if one weren't working, the system could still work even if much of it were destroyed, the RAND Corporation said on its website.

(Mr Baran's son) said his father recently shared a paper that he wrote in 1966, speculating on the future of the computer networks he was working on.

"It spelled out this idea that by the year 2000 that people would be using online networks for shopping and news," he said. "It was an absolute lunatic fringe idea."

Lunatic fringe perhaps, but such ideas were already nosing their way into science fiction by the mid-1960s.