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Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider, known as J.C.R. Licklider or “Lick,” was an American computer scientist, considered one of the most important figures in the history of computer science. He foresaw the need for networked computers with easy user interfaces, and was instrumental in conceiving, funding and managing the research that led to modern personal computers and the Internet.

==Education and Work in Pyschoacoustics==
Licklider was born in 1915 in St. Louis, Missouri. He studied at Washington University in St. Louis, where he received three bachelor’s degrees in 1937, physics, mathematics and psychology, and an MA in psychology in 1938. He received a PhD in psychoacoustics from the University of Rochester in 1942. The same year he went to work at Harvard's Psychoacoustics Laboratory where helped the Air Force to find solutions for the communication problems faced by crewman in noisy bomber aircraft.

He worked at the Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory at Harvard University from 1943 to 1950. In the psychoacoustics field, Licklider is most remembered for his duplex theory of pitch perception (presented in a 1951 paper), which formed the basis for modern models of pitch perception.

==MIT and SAGE==
Licklider became interested in information technology and moved to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as an associate professor in 1950. At MIT he served on a committee that established Lincoln Laboratory, and he established a psychology program for engineering students.

At MIT he worked on a military project known as Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), which aimed to create a computer-aided air defense system. The SAGE system computers collected data from many geographically distance sources and presented it to a human operator, who could then chose the appropriate response. Most computing at that time proceeded by batch-processing: large batches of paper punch cards were prepared ahead of time and fed into computers while technicians waiting for the results to be print out. But the SAGE computer worked in real time: information fed into the machine produced results almost immediately. This experience gave Licklider an appreciation for the importance of real-time processing and networked systems.

==BBN and Man-Computer Symbiosis==
In 1957, Licklider went to work for Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), an architectural acoustics design firm. He persuaded them to buy the first PDP-1 computer sold by Digital Equipment, and he began hiring talented young computer engineers. While at BBN Licklider conducted the first public demonstration of time-sharing.

In 1960, Licklider wrote his famous paper ''Man–Computer Symbiosis'', which outlined his vision of interactions between computers and their human users. Under this vision, human beings would set the goals and formulate the hypotheses, while the computing machines would do the routine work necessary to achieve insights and support decisions in technical fields. This paper laid the basis for the subsequent development of interactive computing, notably by [[Douglas Englebart]].

==ARPA and the  Intergalatic Computer Network==
In 1962, Licklider was invited to join the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defense. (ARPA was later renamed the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or [[DARPA]], in 1972.)

Jack Ruina, director of ARPA, invited Licklider to head up two departments: Behavioral Sciences and Command and Control (which deals with making timely decisions to be carried out by forces in the field). A large Q-32 computer was put at Licklider’s disposal, and he was asked to find other uses for computers besides numerical calculation. 

Licklider set up research contracts with leading computer research institutions in the U.S., including MIT, Stanford University, UCLA, UC Berkeley and the Californian System Development Corporation. At MIT, he granted funding to develop Project MAC, a large mainframe computer that was designed to be shared by up to 30 simultaneous users, each sitting at a separate typewriter terminal.

At the Stanford Research Institute he funded the Augmentation Research Center headed by [[Douglas Englebart]], who later invented the computer mouse and created the oN-Line System (NLS), which was the first multi-user to system to employ hypertext links, raster-scan video monitors and screen windowing.

In April of 1963 Licklider addressed a [http://www.kurzweilai.net/memorandum-for-members-and-affiliates-of-the-intergalactic-computer-network memo] to “Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network,” as he called his colleagues in these research institutions. In this memo he called for standardization among the various computer systems used by members of the group, so that they could be connected and researchers could communicate data between them. Members of this group would later form the core of the team who created the [[ARPANET]], the precursor of today's [[Internet]].

When Licklider had arrived at ARPA, the Command and Control Research Department had focused on computer-simulated war games. He changed the focus to research in time-sharing, computer graphics, and improved computer languages. The name of the department was changed to Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), reflecting this new orientation.

==Libraries, Television and the Computer as a Communications Device==
In 1965 Licklider published the book ''Libraries of the future,'' in which he discussed how information could be stored and retrieved electronically.

In 1967 he submitted the paper ''Televistas: Looking ahead through side windows” to the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television. This paper described a radical departure from the "broadcast" model of television, advocating instead a two-way communications network.

Licklider’s 1968 paper on ''The Computer as a Communication Device'' predicts the use of computer networks to support collaboration among communities without regard to location.

==Project MAC==
In 1968, Licklider became a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at MIT and director of the Project on Mathematics and Computation, known as Project MAC, which had been created in 1963 with funding Licklider had provided from ARPA.

The early Project MAC community included Marvin Minsky, Fernando J. Corbató and a community of computer programmers who drew their inspiration from former colleague John McCarthy, who had envisioned the creation of a computer utility which would deliver computational power the way a electric utility delivers power. Corbató brought CTSS, the first computer time-sharing system, with him from the MIT Computation Center, and ran it on an IBM 7094 purchased with DARPA funding. One of the early focuses of Project MAC was the development of Multics (work on which commenced in 1964) as a successor to CTSS. Multics was an early time-sharing operating system which provided inspiration for some elements of the later [[Unix]] operating system.

Licklider retired and became Professor Emeritus in 1985. He died in 1990.

==External links==
Articles about Licklider:
*Wikipedia article about Licklider: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._R._Licklider
*Article about Licklider in the “Internet Pioneers” series: http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/licklider.html
*Transcript of oral interview with Licklider: http://www.cbi.umn.edu/oh/display.phtml?id=87
Papers by Licklider:
*Man-Computer Symbiosis: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/psz/Licklider.html
*The Computer as a Communication Device: http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-computer-as-a-communication-device

[[Category:People]]