Written by | Jielin Dong (CUSPEA 81 Scholar, Adjunct Research Fellow, China Science and Technology Policy Research Center, Tsinghua University)
In just a few decades, the internet tide has pushed humanity into a completely unimaginable ocean of information. From the fiery era of Internet construction, to the era of network services that have risen together, to the era of Internet celebrities who "you sing and he appears" today, do any people still vaguely remember that this wave of information revolution began with the small goal of scientists in the ivory tower to create "toys" and "tools" for themselves? And the prequel to the Chinese Internet has been active in the figure of high-energy physicists?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="7" >01 Internet: The "big toy" created by scientists</h1>
Scientists are a group of people who are good at imagining and constructing virtual worlds. In the early 1960s, American scientists began to build computer networks, from the principles of computer communication, to the construction of communication protocols and standards, to the connection of national laboratories and university computers, and the invention of some key applications (such as email), computer networks slowly grew in exploration.
The biggest challenge in building a computer network that spans large regions and connects multiple vendors is to have a set of communication protocols that are open, easy to use, scalable, efficient, and recognized by everyone. In the early 1970s, Vinton G. Cerf, a professor at Stanford University, and Robert E. Kahn, a scientist at DARPA at the U.S. Department of Defense at the time, designed the basic architecture of the Internet and created TCP/IP, a key communication protocol for the Internet. They decided not to apply for a patent, publishing a paper in 1974 that made it open to public knowledge, the protocol becoming an OSI international standard in 1978, and then the architecture and protocol were successively adopted by governments as a basic network communication technology.
Computers from government departments, research institutes and universities around the world are also slowly interconnected to become a scientific and educational Internet (Internet), which is a "big tool" and "big toy" for scientists. The Internet gradually replaced the early computer networks based on other technologies and became the mainstream network, and the two scientists won the Turing Award, the highest award in the field of computing, in 2004.
The key technological invention that the Internet has entered thousands of homes and made ordinary people appreciate is the establishment of service-level technical standards (that is, the agreement related to WWW), and the British scientist Tim Berners-Lee is the most important inventor of these technologies. In 1989, Berners-Lee worked at the European Institute of Particle Physics (CERN), which was then the largest Internet node in Europe. He used his own invention of HTML (Hypertext Protocol) and HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and other WWW technologies with the underlying protocols of computer communication TCP/IP, DNS, etc., and in 1991 established the world's first Internet (WWW) website http://info.cern.ch/ (which is still the official website of CERN). In addition, Berners-Lee made the Internet technology he created free and open to the world for free use.
Since then, scientists' "toys" have become more fun, and the early students who surfed the Internet have gradually graduated, and then hyped up this new thing in society. In 1994, politicians, investors and entrepreneurs became the main force in promoting and developing Internet applications and services, and the tide of Internet commercialization began in the United States, which surged into the vision and life of ordinary people with a colorful bubble.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="114" >02 Li Zhengdao: Connecting High-Energy Physicists in China and the United States</h1>
As a world-class leader in theoretical physics, Mr. Li Zhengdao is very familiar with the world's high-energy particle physics experimental field and the frontiers of related supporting technologies, and is also very familiar with the disconnection between China's scientific community and the world after ten years of "Cultural Revolution". Since 1979, Mr. Lee has promoted collaboration between Scientists in the field of high-energy physics between China and the United States with the support of Mr. Deng Xiaoping and other Chinese leaders. The collaboration, with Mr. Li as general counsel, has held annual joint meetings over the past few decades, alternating between science hubs in China and the United States.
Retired Professor Lee Jung-do (Photo taken in San Francisco, January 26, 2016. Image from Li Zhengdao Library, Shanghai Jiao Tong University).
Prior to the 1990s, cooperation between Chinese and American scientists focused on discussing the construction of the Beijing Positron-Negative Electron Collider, the Beijing Spectrometer, and the Beijing Synchrotron Radiation Device. By the early 1990s, the already built experimental facilities began to gradually produce data, so the focus shifted to the operation and improvement of the experimental facilities, the design of physical experiments, and the processing and analysis of data. After the 21st century, the focus of this joint group has shifted to the major renovation project of the Beijing positron-negative electron collider, the Shanghai light source project, the Daya Bay neutrino experiment and the spallation neutron source project.
Through decades of continuous efforts, this cooperation has achieved a series of important scientific achievements, and has also cultivated a large number of backbone forces in the field of high-energy physics in China, and many scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and universities have participated in this work, such as President Zhang Jie of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Ye Minghan, Fang Shouxian, Zheng Zhipeng, Chen Hesheng, who have served as the director of the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (hereinafter referred to as the "Institute of High Energy"),. Because Mr. Lee has been mediating between the top echelons of China and the United States for this project, always solving the most intractable problems, his Chinese counterparts affectionately call him "Commissar Lee." In terms of the quality of work, Mr. Li Zhengdao is very demanding and strict, and some people who work closely with Mr. Li clearly remember the criticism they have received.
There is a large amount of literature on the formal collaboration between high-energy physics scientists in China and the United States, and scientists are still continuing this collaboration. However, many of the high-tech by-products brought about by decades of scientific cooperation are little known, and the "Internet into China" is one of the great technological "by-products".
From June 10 to 13, 1979, the first meeting of the Sino-US Joint Committee on High Energy Physics was held in Beijing, and Deng Xiaoping and Fang Yi received the members of the Sino-US Joint Committee on High Energy Physics. (Source: Website of Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences)
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="115" >03 The birth of Lee Zhengdao and the Chinese Internet</h1>
If Mr. Li Zhengdao is a key node in the history of the development of the Internet and a "router" connecting China and the United States, then Dr. Xu Rongsheng is a core "software package" that Mr. Li built and sent back to the motherland.
Dr. Xu, a researcher at the Institute of High Energy of the Academy of Sciences, went to the United States in the spring of 1982 through the Sino-US Joint Physics Admissions Program (CUSPEA), founded by Mr. Lee Zhengdao, and Mr. Li specially arranged for him to study for a doctorate at the University of California, Santa Cruz. After his degree, he did postdoctoral research at the UCSC Institute for Particle Physics. During his Ph.D. and ph.D. periods, he spent most of his time studying and working at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and became familiar with the accelerator and the early network established by the U.S. Department of Energy, APARNet.
Dr. Rongsheng Xu (CUSPEA 81 Scholar, studied in the United States in the spring of 1982). He is a researcher at the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and former chief scientist of the National Computer Network Intrusion Prevention Center.
Dr. Xu, who is now over, recalled: "One day in 1988, Mr. Li Zhengdao was invited by Professor Abe Seiden, director of the UCSC Institute of Particle Physics, to give a lecture, and he specially told the Chinese students present about the construction results of the Beijing positron-negative electron collider, and stressed that there was an urgent need for software and physical analysis talents. He fervently hoped that I would return to China to work at the High Energy Institute, and I immediately asked him to write me a letter of recommendation. He wrote it and allocated me a sum of dollars from the China Center for Advanced Science and Technology that he established in Beijing as a grant. ”
After returning to his homeland in the autumn of 1988, Dr. Xu joined the Institute of High Energy and quickly devoted himself to the analysis of high-energy experimental data and software programming. At that time, the Chinese scientific community did not know much about the fact that the Internet had become an important means of communication in the international scientific and educational circles. In late 1988, Walter Toki, a professor of high-energy physics at Stanford University, proposed that there should be an Internet connection between China and the United States, but this was stranded due to subsequent political developments. At the 1991 Sino-US Joint Conference on High-Energy Cooperation, American scientists once again proposed to build an international computer networking line between China and the United States based on the cooperation of the Beijing electron-negative collider experiment to solve problems in experimental data transmission and communication.
In particular, Mr. Lee has communicated with Chinese leaders and funded the project by the Natural Science Foundation of China (an institution and system that was also established at the suggestion of Mr. Lee). At the same time, he also lobbied the US government with Professor Torquay and other American scientists to eliminate many concerns and obstacles on the US side. After the two governments agreed, Dr. Xu, who had experience in the United States in networking, became the Chinese leader in the construction of this computer networking project.
In the second half of the 1980s, some schools and research institutes in China sporadically accessed the network servers of foreign universities or research institutes through telephone dialing for email communication. According to Mr. Liu Huaizu, former deputy director of the General Office of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, on August 25, 1986, Mr. Wu Weimin, the person in charge of the ALEPH project of the Institute of High Energy, sent an email to Professor Steinberg of CERN at the 701 Beijing Institute through a long-distance dial line, which was the first e-mail from China to the world.
But early access to the Internet was slow and expensive, so it was only a "luxury" that only a few people could occasionally use. In 1988, the high-energy institute built another line with CERN X.25 and made a computer room. For several years, the small computer room of the Institute of High Energy has been a window for scientists to communicate with the outside world.
IHEP-SLAC network design (manuscript preserved by Xu Rongsheng) drafted by Chinese and American scientists in 1991.
After 18 months of work, Xu Rongsheng's team finally connected the 64K bps TCP/IP line from the Beijing High Energy Institute to the stanford linear accelerator center computer in the United States. Technically, this is China's first international Internet line. In the process, Mr. Lee always communicated with senior Chinese government leaders at critical moments, helped remove conceptual and bureaucratic obstacles, and promoted the support of the telecommunications department from top to bottom, and the post and telecommunications department employees involved in the project at that time were surprised to receive instructions from the top to "speed up".
After the TCP/IP line was connected, with the financial support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, more than a thousand heads of science and education projects across the country quickly set up accounts on the network of the Institute of High Energy, and took the lead in using Internet services such as e-mail to communicate with the world. Since then, China and the United States can not only transmit e-mails and articles, but also realize the real-time transmission of experimental data, and the era of carrying data tapes and books across borders has come to an end!
Early e-mail scientists proposed to the state to "build a nationwide computer network" (letters saved by Xu Rongsheng).
Early surfers on the Internet were authoritative titans in China's science and technology education community. At the end of 1993, under the impetus of some highly respected scientists, a proposal for the Chinese Community of Scientists drafted by Hao Bolin, "Building a Nationwide Computer Network", was submitted to the government, which sounded the clarion call for China's comprehensive construction of the Internet.
In March 1994, China officially signed a contract to join the Internet, and more international channels were opened. In the same year, the Institute took the lead in establishing China's first WWW website. In the next two years, Xu Rongsheng and other scientists toured all over China like Internet "missionaries" to report on popular Internet technology and applications, and American students also returned to start businesses. The Internet has thus made its debut in China.
In April 1994, the Institute of High Energy of the Chinese Academy of Sciences set up China's first Internet server and China's first website (this is the web page of that year - Xu Rongsheng saved).
According to today's standards, the speed of this 64K International Internet dedicated line based on TCP/IP technology was unimaginably slow, far less than the data transmission rate of any personal smartphone today. However, this original information channel not only connected Chinese scientists with their counterparts in the world, but also formed a "nuclear fission" social response, opening a new era in China's Internet era.
In the decades since returning from his studies in the United States, Dr. Xu Rongsheng has made many achievements and awards in all aspects of China's Internet construction. But whenever someone calls him the "Founder of the Chinese Internet", he will shake his head and correct: "Teacher Li Zhengdao is the real promoter of the birth of the Internet in China." ”
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="116" >04 Lee Zheng-do's Internet "future warrior"</h1>
2016 is the 90th birthday of Teacher Lee Jeong-do. In November, scientists from all over the world, especially CUSPEA scholars, gathered in New York, Silicon Valley, Boston, Singapore, Washington, Beijing and Shanghai, as well as in email groups and WeChat groups. On the one hand, I am grateful to Mr. Li Zhengdao and many teachers from both China and the United States for their support, and on the other hand, they also understand each other's struggles and achievements for more than 30 years.
It was found that theoretical physicist Professor Lee Jeong-do had also "derailed" computers, and led scientists to build the fastest supercomputer at the time when he was director of the RIKEN-BNL Institute in the United States from 1997 to 2003. A considerable number of CUSPEA scholars have also become a force promoting Internet technology and applications around the world. It can be said that they are the Internet "future warriors" that Mr. Li inadvertently selected and cultivated.
CUSPEA students who studied at American universities began to be active in computer networks in the mid-1980s, and later many became experts and scholars in the field of computer software and hardware, writing books, teaching and educating people, and innovating. An early story that will be remembered took place in November 1987, when CUSPEA 83, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, formally applied to Usenet administrators to set up a dedicated community Chinese on the Internet, Soc.Culture.China, an application that was officially established within three days with the approval of more than a hundred people online. This virtual community has rapidly grown into an active platform for more than 30,000 people around the world, providing a unique collective memory for the academic cooperation and exchange of ideas and emotions among Chinese students and scholars around the world.
In China, in addition to the efforts of CUSPEA Internet "future warriors" who returned from the United States in the science and education circles like Xu Rongsheng, many people's achievements in the wave of Internet commercialization are also very beautiful, the following are some examples:
· CUSPEA (81) scholar Yu Gang is a serial entrepreneur with outstanding academic achievements. Professor Yu Gang, who is a management scholar based in the academic community, has published more than 80 academic papers and won the world's highest award for the application of management science. In terms of entrepreneurship, he founded the e-commerce company "Yihaodian", which became one of the largest e-commerce companies in China in just seven years, and was acquired by Walmart in 2015. He also founded Collay Technologies in the United States in 1995 and was acquired by Accenture in 2002. Adhering to The sentiment of Mr. Li Zhengdao to give back to the motherland, he has donated 10 million US dollars to wuhan university, his undergraduate alma mater, to illuminate the future path of young students in his own way. Now, his entrepreneurial journey has taken to a new level, and the Internet company he founded, 111 Group, was listed on the NASDAQ in September 2018.
· CUSPEA (81) scholar Liu Zhaohuai is the founder of Infineon. Founded in 2000, Infineon provides video security and smart home products and services, and was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2010. In recent years, Infineon has acquired canadian and Australian related companies, and in 2016 acquired Beijing Pufit, which is engaged in Internet and mobile marketing. At present, Infineon has become one of the world's largest companies in the security industry.
· CUSPEA (85) scholar Zhang Chaoyang is the founder of Sohu. As a physicist with a ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Zhang Chaoyang is very familiar with the development trend of the early Internet in the United States, as early as 1996, he returned to China to start an Internet business, and in 1998, Sohu was officially established, which soon became a famous Internet portal company, and was listed on the NASDAQ in the United States in 2000. At present, Sohu is still one of the most influential companies in China's Internet information and entertainment.
· CUSPEA ((88) scholar Mi Qun is currently the founding partner of Lightspeed China Venture Capital, with more than US$2 billion in funds under management. He has invested in industry-leading companies such as Baidu, Dianping, Catch-up, Contact Interactive, and Rong360. In 2019, he was named one of the 15 Best Venture Capitalists in the World by Forbes. Prior to founding Lightspeed China, Mi Qun was a global partner at Lightspeed Ventures in the United States. Miqun has been the Chief Representative of Google China Representative Office and The Head of Products and Investments for Asia since 2003. Previously, he co-founded iTelco Communications, which provides webcom products and services worldwide. Mi Qun worked at Intel's headquarters, where he co-invented the flash multi-bit storage technology that grew into Intel's multibillion-dollar flash memory business. He holds 14 U.S. patents covering flash memory, communications, Internet security, and commerce.
· CUSPEA (88) scholar Yang Bo (Abei) founded Douban (douban.com) in 2005. It is an Internet content and communication platform with book reviews, movies and music reviews as its core content, with millions of registered users. In 2015, the company launched a mobile Internet platform.
The future is difficult to plan for and unpredictable. The Sino-US high-energy physics cooperation project, the Sino-US joint physics enrollment project (CUSPEA), and the Natural Science Foundation of China promoted by Mr. Li Zhengdao were originally intended to improve China's scientific level, but inadvertently produced the "melon" of China's Internet, which is really a wonderful historical stroke!
This year is the 95th birthday of Mr. Lee Jeong-do, let us jointly congratulate Mr. Lee on a happy birthday!
Note: The content of this article is from the author's book "A Brief History of Human Technological Innovation: The Power of Desire".