Say Bonjour to the Internet's Long-Lost French Uncle

The internet was build on TCP/IP, networking protocols originnally created by American computer scientists Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn. But Cerf and Kahn were building on the work of Louis Pouzin.

In the early 1970s, working as a researcher for the French government, Pouzin created a computer network known as CYCLADES, and Vint Cerf himself has cited Pouzin’s design as one of the key influences behind the development of TCP/IP.

It isn’t hard to see why. With CYCLADES, Pouzin built a network where the delivery of information between machines was overseen by the machines themselves — not by some piece of central network hardware. In other words, he realized one the fundamental ideas that makes the Internet the Internet.

“We designed CYCLADES to be connected to other networks — in the future,” Pouzin remembers.

This past April, in recognition of his role in the creation of TCP/IP and his contribution to various other networking standards, Pouzin was inducted into the Internet Society’s (ISOC) Internet Hall of Fame. Part of the Hall’s inaugural class, he was enshrined alongside such as names as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Ray Tomlinson, Leonard Kleinrock, and, yes, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn.

(...)

https://www.wired.com/2013/01/louis-pouzin-internet-hall/

Cyclades est un réseau d'ordinateurs français, concurrent et partenaire du réseau américain Arpanet, qui a été le premier à utiliser les datagrammes. Lancé en 1972 sous la direction de Louis Pouzin2, le réseau est abandonné en 1978 après l'ouverture du réseau public à commutation de paquets Transpac.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclades_(r%C3%A9seau)