Merit Network, Inc.

Merit (once an acronym for Michigan Educational Research Information Triad) was an organization developed to research the effects of connecting large research universities together by means of a computer network. Officially established in 1966 and still operating today, "Merit is among the Internet pioneers and the oldest organization continuously providing data networking services" (Eric Aupperle, Merit--who, what, and why , p.3).

In 1964, Stanford Ericksen, Director of the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) at the University of Michigan, was tasked with writing a proposal for a "state-wide learning center" (Aupperle, p.1) for the Michigan state legislature and asked colleague Karl Zinn to contribute a portion of the proposal to the role of computers in education. Zinn wrote that "significant benefits might be gained from sharing computing resources via an electronic linkage between large, timesharing computers" (Aupperle, p.1). Zinn's small contribution had large implications. As a result, the legislature asked Ericksen and Zinn to study the idea of networking large universities. Wayne State University, Michigan State University, and the University of Michigan formed MICIS, or the Michigan Inter-university Committee on Information Systems, eventually establishing itself as MERIT in 1966.

With a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and indirect project cost support from the University of Michigan (UM agreed to house Merit and pay staff), Merit began to research and build its network. Merit contracted Applied Dynamics Division of Reliance Electric in Saline, Michigan to help build the technology for the network. On December 14, 1971 computers at the University of Michigan and Wayne State University connected for the first time; a connection to Michigan State University was made a year later.

Merit's involvement in the NSF network of national supercomputers, or NSFNET marked an important milestone in Merit's history. In order to manage their ever-expanding network more efficiently and effectively, the NSF solicited proposals for an organization to manage the NSFNET. In November 1987, NSF chose Merit, which had partnered with MCI and IBM to manage its network. Merit, IBM and MCI formed their own company called Advanced Network & Services, Inc. (ANS), which managed this large and sophisticated network, contributing much research and innovation throughout the network's tenure. In 1995, NSF ended its involvement in the NSFNET in favor of commercial vendors. Although Merit no longer managed NSFNET, Merit continued to provide some services for the network after 1995.

Merit has been involved in many different projects and continues to evolve today. For a more in-depth discussion of Merit's history, researchers should consult Eric Aupperle's article on Merit in "Merit--who, what, and why" and John Mulcahy's "A Chronicle of Merit's Early History" (see related resources below for more information). For current Merit projects as of December 2005, researchers can access Merit's website at http://www.merit.edu.

From the guide to the Merit Network, Inc. records, 1966-2002, (Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan)