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That's odoo.com slash memory.

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This episode of the Memory Palace is brought to you by Progressive,

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law. This

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is the Memory Palace. I'm Nate DeMeo. A

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brief note written upon learning that computer scientist David

1:00

Mills has died at the age of 85. There

1:05

was a day, a regular work day in 1985, and

1:08

there is some irony in the fact that

1:10

I can't be any more specific than that.

1:12

But there was a day when David Mills,

1:14

after wrestling with the same problem for several

1:16

years, cracked the code, or

1:18

came up with the code, developed the

1:20

program that allowed the machines linked on

1:22

the ARPANET, the first sustained stab at

1:24

network computing that would evolve in the

1:26

ensuing decades into the internet as we

1:28

know it today. It

1:31

allowed those computers to share time, to

1:33

operate according to the same clock. So when

1:35

a computer in an office in San Francisco

1:37

would send a message at precisely 11.05 a.m.

1:41

to a computer down in Palo Alto, both

1:43

computers would know what 11.05 meant. This

1:47

was an old problem that had been made new in

1:49

the computer age. People

1:52

had struggled to get on the same

1:54

page time-wise since the invention of timekeeping

1:56

devices. If the king demanded that

1:58

you appear in court at four o'clock, You

2:00

better know which four of which clock, because

2:03

the one in the Castle Belfry could well

2:05

run quite differently than the one in your

2:07

neighborhood church, say. And when the

2:09

railroads came and the speed of travel between

2:11

places accelerated, it mattered that having

2:13

taken the nine o'clock leaving from Boston or

2:16

Columbus to make a meeting in Providence or

2:18

Dayton and then made the hour's journey from

2:20

one to the other, it was

2:22

important that it would be ten when you arrived. And

2:26

so cities and countries and businesses and

2:28

the railroads themselves began to work together

2:30

to develop ways to formally agree about

2:32

the time. Even now as

2:34

government agencies operate atomic clocks that

2:36

tick away with phenomenal precision, that

2:38

time by which we all abide

2:41

comes to us from several international

2:43

bodies methodically averaging the various readings

2:45

generated by an array of official

2:47

clocks. David Mills essentially figured

2:49

out how to do that for network

2:51

computers. In this, I read,

2:54

the math is beyond me, was apparently

2:56

a struggle genius. He

2:58

figured out how to get all these disparate machines

3:00

to ping each other back and forth and come

3:02

to agreement about the correct time even when one

3:04

or both of them was off. One

3:07

of Mills colleagues told a reporter for the New

3:09

Yorker that his solution, the program Mills

3:11

called the Network Time Protocol, seemed

3:14

like black magic. In

3:17

that day that David Mills, then 45 years

3:20

old, a computer scientist looking every inch

3:22

the computer scientist, hair thinning,

3:24

beard a bit unkempt, a

3:26

body shaped by sitting, that

3:29

one workday of this one man, made

3:32

possible nearly every workday, nearly

3:34

every one of us has had since, I don't

3:37

know, 1990s? Every email, every

3:39

invoice, every spreadsheet,

3:41

every bank deposit, every purchase order, every

3:44

electronic everything was made possible because David

3:46

Mills figured out how to make sure

3:48

the computer is required to send and

3:50

receive and process any and all of

3:53

those things. Could keep track

3:55

of them because the people and systems that might

3:57

need to find them or account for them. knew

4:00

when they were created, and accessed

4:02

and sat. So

4:04

much of the shift that our lives and

4:07

the infrastructure upon which our lives are built

4:09

has made to the internet and to other

4:11

network systems is because of that

4:13

shift that David Mills put in at the office. And

4:16

even if you are not online, if you work

4:18

with your hands, if you happen to be listening

4:20

to this because you are overhearing it through a

4:22

speaker at a farmer's market to which you have

4:24

just pulled your handmade wagon carrying the morel mushrooms

4:26

you have foraged from the forest surrounding your off-the-grid

4:28

yurt, someone is

4:31

going to buy those mushrooms with

4:33

money drawn from a bank. It only works, only

4:36

works now, like the entire

4:38

financial system, like hospitals, like phones,

4:40

like GPS, like the national security

4:42

state, because of

4:44

what David Mills did on that one day in 1985. No,

4:52

the job of keeping time wasn't a one-day

4:54

thing. Mills spent

4:56

the ensuing decades tinkering and tweaking and

4:58

working to make sure the system he

5:00

invented kept working, as it

5:02

has. And when I say

5:04

he spent all that time, all that

5:07

now-synchronized and pharaohifiable time, I

5:09

don't mean that having solved the problem

5:11

in 1985 he stayed in the game

5:13

and kept contributing to the corpus of

5:15

work related to the obscure but vital

5:17

field of computer time, I mean that

5:19

he was the person who kept the clocks in sync. And

5:22

it was him. That one guy. People

5:25

called him Father Time. And

5:28

it wasn't even his real job. He made

5:30

his living primarily teaching at the University of

5:32

Delaware. But maintaining the network

5:34

time protocol was the work of his life.

5:37

By all accounts, he found it endlessly

5:39

fascinating, trying to perfect the system, making

5:41

sure it was robust and resilient enough

5:43

to accommodate the ever-expanding web of network

5:46

machines, back when

5:48

it was just several dozen computers at

5:50

North American colleges to the billions of

5:52

devices we have today. This

5:54

timekeeping was an open source project, so

5:57

there were individual engineers and programmers

6:00

off on their own, refining and

6:02

troubleshooting, whacking whatever digital moles happen

6:04

to pop up, offering up

6:06

patches and suggested improvements on

6:08

message boards and through email chains from

6:10

their homes and labs and offices all

6:12

over the world. David

6:14

Mills and his home office in suburban

6:16

Delaware, where he liked to tinker

6:18

with ham radios and read history

6:21

books about ancient civilizations, especially the

6:23

Mayans, they were very good with

6:25

calendars. He would take

6:27

it all in and sift through the

6:29

ideas, manage the egos

6:31

and the particular peculiar politics that

6:33

arise whenever experts vie to apply

6:35

their expertise. And

6:38

then he would make the call. There were

6:40

many people responsible for helping the system mature,

6:43

but it was always his baby. Until

6:46

very recently, really, he was in charge of

6:48

this utterly critical function

6:50

that, in concrete ways, holds

6:53

together a world it helped create. He

6:59

was a kid who was diagnosed with

7:01

glaucoma and had an operation that slotted

7:03

its effects, but took his sight entirely

7:06

eventually. He had

7:08

all sorts of assistive devices and systems,

7:10

some of which he developed himself, but it

7:13

got too difficult to play his same role as the

7:15

keeper of the keeper of time. That

7:18

role is shared by several people now. If

7:22

you wanted to know the whole story and figure

7:24

out all the details, trace all

7:27

the ways the code changed over the years, really

7:29

get down the weeds with all the ins and outs of

7:32

the debates that led to those changes, the

7:34

disputes and milestones and missteps and

7:37

small slights and little acts

7:39

of grace that happened along the way, and

7:41

guided David Mills in his decision making, you

7:45

can because of him and the work that

7:47

he did that allows us to go

7:49

back and look at the email chains and find

7:52

archived postings on listservs, messages

7:54

that could be shared at all because of his

7:56

work, that

7:58

work that made the world as well. we know it. Changed

8:02

how we live within it. How

8:05

we remember how we lived. Vodos that are tied

8:08

to dates. Searchable records.

8:11

Emails. Whole histories

8:13

of exchanges. Whole relationships. Held

8:17

for us forever. Relationships

8:19

that so many of them wouldn't have

8:21

sustained. It wouldn't have happened

8:23

at all without our

8:25

device connecting with their device.

8:28

And coming to agreement about time. All

8:31

of us connected by and

8:34

to David Mills. This

9:31

episode of the Memory Palace was written and produced by

9:33

me, Nate DeMeo, in February 2024.

9:37

This show gets research assistance from Eliza McGraw.

9:39

It's a proud member of Radiotopia, a

9:42

network of independently owned and operated listener

9:44

supported podcasts from PRX, a

9:46

not for profit public media company, a

9:49

rare and somewhat miraculous thing in this day

9:51

and age and preposterous media

9:54

landscape. If you ever want to

9:56

drop me a line, you can do so. Thank

9:58

you David Mills. Add need at

10:01

the Mary pass.org time you can follow

10:03

me on Facebook and Twitter. Which

10:05

you are welcome to call X if

10:08

you want At the Memory Palace are

10:10

you can follow me on Instagram in

10:12

apparently threads to their linked why not

10:14

add the Memory Palace podcast. I've

10:18

been. Am I

10:20

would say struggling? But I feel like that

10:22

implies more thought than I've actually been putting

10:25

into this. which is I guess been more.

10:27

It's kind of a shrugging and know it's

10:29

but I have occasionally wondered when I should

10:31

be doing about all these platforms and birth

10:33

handles and I don't know that I know

10:36

yet. Ah, my throat leaning toward just having

10:38

a newsletter in our focus and find out

10:40

what's happening with a show. With

10:43

live shows that I'm going to be doing later

10:45

this year and whether they might be coming to

10:47

town armed. With a book that will be coming

10:50

out later this year and a date that I

10:52

know but I am not quite able to announce

10:54

yet. But my guess is they

10:56

say all this out loud. I think that's gonna

10:58

do. I think a newsletter make some sense and

11:01

so I'll go figure that out and which know

11:03

the details in the space soon. As

11:05

thank you for listening and I will talk to guys again. Radio.