Jacek Gajewski:
The organization, of which Gajewski has been a member since 1994, honored the academic for bringing the internet to Poland and popularizing it. A physicist by training, Gajewski conducted research in high-energy physics for most of his career until his passion for the internet led him to stop actively working in that field in 1997. Today he is a senior researcher at the Warsaw University's computer center in the physics department, director of the "Internet for Schools" program, and general secretary of the Central and Eastern European Networking Association (CEENet), which lobbies for regional IT investment. Gajewski recently met with the WBJ's Gregory Keller to talk about the internet's origins here and obstacles to development. The following is an edited version of their conversation.
Q: So how did you bring the internet to Poland?
A: You have to differentiate between the beginning of an international network in Poland, and the beginning of the internet in Poland. It started from about 1986-87, when many Polish scientists were already working abroad and having contact with either the internet or a network called Bitnet or EARN, which were not that ambitious, but it allowed you to exchange e-mail, send files and remotely use another computer. Those scientists were really in need of communication with their partners all over the world. Even earlier in Poland there were trials to connect two universities or two towns, so there were projects that were local to Poland.
Q: Who were the other founders of the internet here, besides yourself?
A: There was a group of three people who started the movement in '87 - Andrzej Zienkiewicz, Maciej Kozlowski and myself at the Institute of Experimental Physics. My profession was high-energy physics. I was working with the accelerator experiment in Hamburg and in CERN in Geneva. Our problem was that we belonged to a very huge international collaboration so we had a need to communicate with partners all over the world on a daily basis. You cannot do this business without exchanging 50 e-mails per day with 20 countries daily - it's just the nature of the business. Shortly stated, there was a real need for international telecommunications. So I used the very lucky coincidence that at that time the director of Warsaw University was also a high-energy physicist, Grzegorz Bialkowski. I told him that we have to do something. He agreed, and we wrote our first application to join the network, which was called Bitnet, in the European version it was called EARN.
Q: When was that?
A: That was '87, our first application. We were technically prepared. It was not a problem of technology. It was a problem rather of a formal agreement (of the U.S. government allowing Polish researchers onto the network). The answer which came was a clear, 'No.' The real reason was that this networking technology was still under restriction by the American government. There was a list of things, which were allowed to be sold to communist countries, and a list of things, which were prohibited. And this was not allowed.
Q: How did you rebound?
A: We were disappointed, but we developed close relationships with the Polish lobby, namely Polish scientists in the United States. Two people were really important. One was Bogdan Paczkowski, who was working on the Hubbel telescope and a famous professor at Princeton with tenure. He was very close to Kozlowski; they were doing the same experiments. He put us in contact with Dave Phillips, who had set up a discussion list called Poland-L, where the problems of Poland were widely discussed among a kind of lobby of Polish emigrants and scientists that existed all over the world. They also contacted Ira Fuks, the father of Bitnet in the United States, and asked him what to do to connect Poland.
Q: Did any of this help?
A: In '89 the system changed and things were not as strict. There was a new director of EARN, and also a new rector of Warsaw University, Professor Andrzej Kajetan Wroblewski, also a high-energy physicist. The second attempt was in the beginning of '89, and Professor Frode Greisen, a guy from Denmark, not very far from Poland, was very friendly and helpful. He had his own limitations, he couldn't act against the law, but he really did his best to help us. I had unofficially tested that the answer would be 'no,' but this lobby of Poland-L had a new good idea how to do it, how to press the American side to get an agreement. In the meantime we had changed our government to the first non-communist government. The answer which came from the United States was, 'Please send a formal petition to President (George) Bush and if you collect 10,000 signatures, then we will allow you to connect.' It was typical American style.
Q: So how did you bring the internet to Poland?
A: You have to differentiate between the beginning of an international network in Poland, and the beginning of the internet in Poland. It started from about 1986-87, when many Polish scientists were already working abroad and having contact with either the internet or a network called Bitnet or EARN, which were not that ambitious, but it allowed you to exchange e-mail, send files and remotely use another computer. Those scientists were really in need of communication with their partners all over the world. Even earlier in Poland there were trials to connect two universities or two towns, so there were projects that were local to Poland.
Q: Who were the other founders of the internet here, besides yourself?
A: There was a group of three people who started the movement in '87 - Andrzej Zienkiewicz, Maciej Kozlowski and myself at the Institute of Experimental Physics. My profession was high-energy physics. I was working with the accelerator experiment in Hamburg and in CERN in Geneva. Our problem was that we belonged to a very huge international collaboration so we had a need to communicate with partners all over the world on a daily basis. You cannot do this business without exchanging 50 e-mails per day with 20 countries daily - it's just the nature of the business. Shortly stated, there was a real need for international telecommunications. So I used the very lucky coincidence that at that time the director of Warsaw University was also a high-energy physicist, Grzegorz Bialkowski. I told him that we have to do something. He agreed, and we wrote our first application to join the network, which was called Bitnet, in the European version it was called EARN.
Q: When was that?
A: That was '87, our first application. We were technically prepared. It was not a problem of technology. It was a problem rather of a formal agreement (of the U.S. government allowing Polish researchers onto the network). The answer which came was a clear, 'No.' The real reason was that this networking technology was still under restriction by the American government. There was a list of things, which were allowed to be sold to communist countries, and a list of things, which were prohibited. And this was not allowed.
Q: How did you rebound?
A: We were disappointed, but we developed close relationships with the Polish lobby, namely Polish scientists in the United States. Two people were really important. One was Bogdan Paczkowski, who was working on the Hubbel telescope and a famous professor at Princeton with tenure. He was very close to Kozlowski; they were doing the same experiments. He put us in contact with Dave Phillips, who had set up a discussion list called Poland-L, where the problems of Poland were widely discussed among a kind of lobby of Polish emigrants and scientists that existed all over the world. They also contacted Ira Fuks, the father of Bitnet in the United States, and asked him what to do to connect Poland.
Q: Did any of this help?
A: In '89 the system changed and things were not as strict. There was a new director of EARN, and also a new rector of Warsaw University, Professor Andrzej Kajetan Wroblewski, also a high-energy physicist. The second attempt was in the beginning of '89, and Professor Frode Greisen, a guy from Denmark, not very far from Poland, was very friendly and helpful. He had his own limitations, he couldn't act against the law, but he really did his best to help us. I had unofficially tested that the answer would be 'no,' but this lobby of Poland-L had a new good idea how to do it, how to press the American side to get an agreement. In the meantime we had changed our government to the first non-communist government. The answer which came from the United States was, 'Please send a formal petition to President (George) Bush and if you collect 10,000 signatures, then we will allow you to connect.' It was typical American style.
