Ed Krol is an important figure in Internet history. He was the network manager at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the former assistant director of Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is also the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Internet and The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog. The Beckman Institute, current Headquarters of the NCSA The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is one of the five original centers in the National Science Foundations Supercomputer Centers Program and a unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. ... The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, also known as UIUC and the U of I (the officially preferred abbreviation), is the flagship campus in the University of Illinois system. ...

Background

Krol was raised in Chicago, Illinois. He received his B.A. from the University of Illinois and spent his entire career there. Chicago (officially named the City of Chicago) is the third largest city in the United States (after New York City and Los Angeles), with an official population of 2,896,016, as of the 2000 census. ... Official language(s) English Capital Springfield Largest city Chicago Area  Ranked 25th  - Total 57,918 sq mi (149,998 km²)  - Width 210 miles (340 km)  - Length 390 miles (629 km)  - % water 4. ...

NCSA and NIS

In 1985, he began working at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Indeed, "Ed Krol was the network manager for the NCSA when the contract was received to establish the NSFNet, and led the team in the network development" [1]. During this time, he published (through funding by the National Science Foundation), the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Internet (August 25, 1987) [2], "because he had so much trouble getting information and was sick of telling the same story to everyone" [3]. It was eventually published by O'Reilly, though a digital catalog related to the text was published online [4]. The Beckman Institute, current Headquarters of the NCSA The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is one of the five original centers in the National Science Foundations Supercomputer Centers Program and a unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. ... National Science Foundation Network (NSFNet) was a major part of early 1990s Internet backbone. ... The logo of the National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. ... Programming Perl is a classic OReilly book. ...

In 1989, he became the assistant director for Network Information Services, Computing and Communications Service Office, University of Illinois. In 1992, he published the popular user's guide to the Internet, The Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog.

Works

• The Whole Internet: The Next Generation (1999)
• The Whole Internet for Windows 95 (1995)
• "What is the Internet?", with E. Hoffman (1993)
• Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog (1992)
• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Internet (1987)

See also

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy cultural references
• History of the Internet

Since the original radio transmission of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, there have been many references to the series in many types of media. ... The history of the Internet dates back to the early development of communication networks. ...

External links

• Biography
• Krol takes time for self, travel and volunteering during retirement
• e-text of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Internet at Project Gutenberg