• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
Ihof Logo Header 182px 67px
Search DropdownSearch IconDonate
  • About
    • Advisory Board
    • 2025 Nominations
    • Previous Events
  • Inductees
  • News
    • Blog
    • Announcements
  • Donate
Home / Inductee Highlights / Ira Fuchs: Life After BITNET
4 September 2018

Ira Fuchs: Life After BITNET

Now retired, Internet Hall of Fame inductee Ira Fuchs, a co-founder of BITNET, still has a passion for communications, but of the lower-tech, four-legged variety: he recently adopted a black lab that he and his wife are training to be a seeing-eye dog.

He said his family never had a dog when his kids were growing up; he got the idea after bumping into someone on the Princeton campus who was raising one of the puppies.

Strings of data on the screen.

“It turns out my wife knew his wife. We started talking, and I said, wow this is really great. So I got the name and number and started the process,” he said.

Fuchs said he and his wife started going to the necessary meetings and learning the training, all while keeping it a secret from his three adult kids for a year-and-a-half.

“It wasn’t easy because all three are dog crazy,” he said. “They kept saying to us, ‘Why don’t you and mom get a dog.’ I kept saying, ‘Why don’t you get a dog.’”

The dog finally came home at 1 p.m. on a Tuesday, he said, and he immediately sent his three adult kids an email about an important family meeting that night on Zoom.

“I did not say why. I just said it’s not a health issue,” he said. “Then they came to the meeting. I said there is something that has been going on for a year-and-a-half. You could see the look on their faces, wondering what I was going to tell them. Then I did something really nasty, I said, ‘I’ve fallen in love.’ My oldest said, ‘It better be a four-legged creature!’”

By the weekend, he said, two of the three were arriving in town to meet it. The other was planning to visit within a few weeks.

Related Posts

8 February 2018

Remembering John Perry Barlow

Read More about Remembering John Perry Barlow

15 October 2018

Inductee Helps Students Use Internet to Assess Forest Health

Read More about Inductee Helps Students Use Internet to Assess Forest Health

27 June 2018

Mike Jensen: At the Forefront of Next Gen Internet Connectivity

Read More about Mike Jensen: At the Forefront of Next Gen Internet Connectivity

18 April 2018

Venezuela’s First Connection a Result of “Sheer Luck”

Read More about Venezuela’s First Connection a Result of “Sheer Luck”

Footer

Facebook F 1
Twitter 1
Youtube 1
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Contact Us

The Internet Hall of Fame is presented by:

Internet Society 76x25

Internet Society

1551 Emancipation Highway #1506
Fredericksburg, VA. 22401
U.S.A
+1-703-439-2120

© 2025 Internet Society