John E. Clark

U.S. Navy admiral who became the Advanced Research Projects Agency's first deputy director in 1958, recruited by first director Roy Johnson as one of the agency's earliest hires alongside chief scientist Herbert York.

Matters to this vault as a named, directly-interviewed eyewitness to ARPA's founding months, interviewed by the agency's own 1975 institutional historian: his four-word summary of the agency's earliest days — "There were no charts and no soundings" — is the vault's most vivid primary testimony for how improvised ARPA's February 1958 start actually was, and he is thanked by name in the report's preface in the same breath as Herbert York and James Killian, distinct from the agency's line of Directors.

Not to be confused with entity-a-e-clark (A.E. Clark), an unrelated essayist and translator elsewhere in this vault.

References

• claim-arpa-opened-1958-no-staff-ida-became-hiring-hall
• claim-york-1975-interview-and-barber-report-resolve-arpa-director-contradiction