I was manager of development for Project Athena beginning in 1985. Amongst our projects was Kerberos, and, as you know, it was a direct implementation of Needham-Schroeder. Schroeder had been Jerome Saltzer's Ph.D. student and Saltzer was the MIT faculty member in charge of the technical side of Athena, and to whom I reported. The word "principal" was solidly in place from the moment the Kerberos work began, and comes directly from the work of Saltzer and Schroeder. At least as early as 1975 the term "principal" was in use in their work; see [1] for my own earliest reference. I suspect it was in place at Project MAC and might thus have some lineage with Multics, but now I am speculating.
Needham is sadly gone, but Schroeder and Saltzer are still with us. If it is worth my pursuit of the matter I'll make the time for it, but I now forget why this was asked. If it is curiousity, perhaps the canoe is now far enough upriver. If it is a patent claim or the like and one needs to find the exact wet spot in the ground that the river starts, well, let me know. --dan [1] Proceedings of the IEEE. Vol. 63, No. 9 (September 1975), pp. 1278-1308; Manuscript received October 11, 1974; revised April 17, 1975. Copyright 1975 by J. H. Saltzer. The authors are with Project MAC and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Mass. 02139. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]