It's been interesting going over historical documents, RFCs, and some personal correspondence with people who were involved with the AMPRNet at various times. I think we've now got a pretty good picture of the history of the AMPRNet up to the current day.

Let me recap the history as I know it:

In 1981, Hank Magnuski, KA6M, got the network with a phone call to Jon Postel at USC-ISI, later the SRI-NIC.

Around 1983, Hank passed it on to Phil Karn (KA9Q), then at BellCoRe. Phil managed it until he left to go to work at Qualcomm in San Diego, and gave it to Wally Linstruth (WA6JPR) [RIP 2010]. Phil is now retired, and continues to be involved with AMPRNet.

Around 1988, Wally passed the network on to me to manage, and I've been doing so ever since.

In 2011, it seemed wise to legally formalize the ownership, so we incorporated our organization, Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC), as a non-profit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable organization, and I became its president.

The American Registry of Internet Numbers (ARIN) and Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which are the authority in these matters, recognizes us (ARDC) as the legal owner of the AMPRNet, 44.0.0.0/8.

If there's any corrections needed in the above brief history, please let me know. - Brian