One can hard­ly imag­ine the feel­ing I had when the email came in end of April, Internet Hall of Fame, con­grat­u­la­tions.” And reach­ing some­body who is five years retired, near­ly for­got­ten, with project works thir­ty years ago… In the pro­file, I read that I was enti­tled par­ti­san.” And I real­ly admit I became par­ti­san short­ly after the first email came in, exact­ly on today’s date, August 3rd, 1984 because of the fact that the pro­lon­ga­tion of our project was denied. Because uni­ver­si­ties were looked as to be not the right place to deliv­er net­work ser­vices or pro­vide net­work ser­vices. But in real­i­ty I think they fore­saw that I would very soon orga­nize an oppo­si­tion against a strict [?] pol­i­cy. What actu­al­ly hap­pened. So from a par­ti­san thir­ty years ago to an inductee in the Internet Hall of Fame. What a change.

For me it is a fairy tale quite sim­i­lar to that of the ugly duck­ling. Perhaps you know. And from the ugly duck­ling we can learn if you are in such a mis­er­able sit­u­a­tion what to do. And what did the lit­tle ugly duck­ling [do]? It went into the world and look for birds of the same feath­er. And I found my first boss in Larry Landweber’s work­shop, as a few of you as well, and lat­er in the Internet Society. Without their help I would not stand here. So it was, for exam­ple, Dave Farber’s soft­ware we used. It was Stephen Wolff who gave the okay to our China con­nec­tion. And its was Steven Goldstein who gave okay to the con­nec­tion to the NSFNET. So I want to thank you all, includ­ing my for­mer staff, who might watch this cer­e­mo­ny today or even lat­er. Thank you. 

Further Reference

Werner Zorn pro­file, Internet Hall of Fame 2013