One of the first things Lukasik had done upon being named head of the agency was get Roberts to give him an e-mail address and access to the ARPANET. It was unusual for someone who wasn't a computer scientist to be interested in using network mail, and more unusual for anyone to grow as reliant on it as Lukasik did.
A frequent traveler, Lukasik seldom went anywhere without lugging along his 30-pound "portable" Texas Instruments terminal with an acoustic coupler, so he could dial in and check his messages from the road. "I really used it to manage ARPA," Lukasik recalled. "I would be at a meeting, and every hour I would dial up my mail. I encouraged everybody in sight to use it." He pushed it on all his office directors and they pushed it on others. ARPA managers noticed that e-mail was the easiest way to communicate with the boss, and the fastest way to get his quick approval on things.
Lukasik and Roberts had an excellent relationship, partly because they were both analytical thinkers, and partly because Roberts was always quick to answer any questions Lukasik had about his projects. "If we had a meeting on Tuesday afternoon and I sent Larry away with some questions to answer," Lukasik said, "he'd come back the next day for another meeting with more than just answers. He'd have trends and projections and comparisons."
Then Lukasik discovered what was happening, and the utility of e-mail became clearer than ever. Typically, Roberts would leave Lukasik's office, return to his own office and fire off messages to the experts on the topic at hand, who in turn bounced the questions off their graduate students. Twenty-four hours and a flurry of e-mail later, the problem had usually been solved several times over. "The way Larry worked was the quintessential argument in favor of a computer network," Lukasik said. During Lukasik's tenure, Roberts's annual budget climbed from $27 million to $44 million.
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