10 People In The Internet Hall Of Fame That You've Probably Never Heard Of

As of 2012, there's such a thing as an Internet Hall of Fame.

It functions just as you'd expect, honoring people through history up to the present who've made significant contributions furthering the Internet in one way or another.

You've got your tech superstars on the represented here, of course. Linus Torvalds, creator of the open-source Linux operating system. Tim Berners-Lee, father of the modern Web. The list of obvious names goes on much in the same way of saying The Beatles are a good band.

But then there are those whose names escape the public eye despite being revered among the tech community. Who's Donald Davies? Who's J.C.R. Licklider? Why are they (and many, many others) so important as to be inducted into a hall of fame?

Charles Herzfeld was director at DARPA in the 1960s and is best remembered as the guy who made the decision to create ARPANET, an early predecessor of the Internet.

In 1971, Raymond Tomlinson implemented the first email system on ARPANET.

Donald Davies is one of the key inventors of packet switching, a fundamental technology behind the development of the modern Internet.