Ben Barker

Ben Barker was a Harvard student recruited by engineer Severo Ornstein to join Bolt Beranek and Newman's hardware team for the Interface Message Processor, the specialized computer that became the ARPANET's first packet-switching node. Working alongside Ornstein during 1969, Barker helped design the modifications to a Honeywell 516 computer needed to adapt it for the IMP role, and he personally installed the first IMP at UCLA that September. He wrote Do it to it, Truett on the shipping crate as a tribute to colleague Truett Thach, an inscription that became a piece of early Internet lore.