April 7, 1969 was the day a graduate student at UCLA, Steve Crocker, published RFC 1 to the somewhat informal Network Working Group associated with the ARPA Network project. I have heard Steve Crocker speaking informally about those days and my understanding is he created what became the "Request for Comments" series because anything more formal would have brought down several layers of governement bureaucracy.
It's interesting that the Internet owes its origins to a government project, but a lot of what happened was done by individuals and groups working around and/or in spite of government processes.
Today's New York Times includes an OpEd piece written by Stephen Crocker:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/opinion/07crocker.html
Here Steve says "Still fearful of sounding presumptuous, I labeled the note a 'Request for Comments'" but he says his fear was of "inciting the wrath of some prestigious professor at some phantom East Coast establishment."
Posted by: brough | April 07, 2009 at 08:41 AM