I think the NY Times did not intend to make that claim. Rather, it was
aiming at the notion that the heart of Paul's work on distributed
communication was based on the same ideas that informed the design of
the ARPANET: packet switching. Paul's design for a resilient, packet
voice command and control system was contemporary with Len Kleinrock's
work on the mathematics of packet switching in his Ph.D. dissertation
topic and with Donald Davies' work at the UK National Physical
Laboratory. Davies coined the use of the term "packet" to refer to
addressed chunks of data.

While the designers of the ARPANET did not apparently know of Paul's
work until it was brought to their attention after the major design
work was done, it is fair to say that all of these players, including
Paul Baran, appreciated the power of this alternative to traditional
circuit switching.

vint cerf

Paul Baran ha o non ha avuto per primo, o comunque in simultanea con altri, l'idea cardine del packet switching?

Ciao,
Paolo