RTX BBN Technologies (commonly BBN, from its original name of Bolt, Beranek and Newman) is an American research and development company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.1
In 1966 the awarded the firm the , in 1999 BBN received the , and on 1 February 2013 BBN was awarded the , the highest honors that the U.S. government bestows upon scientists, engineers and inventors, by President . It became a wholly owned subsidiary of in 2009.
Where RTX BBN Technologies leads. Every connection below has a source: a link in this article, a shared Wikipedia category, or CirrusSearch text similarity. Articles already on your trail are left out.
RTX BBN Technologies (commonly BBN, from its original name of Bolt, Beranek and Newman) is an American research and development company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Bolt, Beranek and Newman
RTX BBN Technologies (commonly BBN, from its original name of Bolt, Beranek and Newman) is an American research and development company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Terms the article defines in bold, quoted in context.
Categories:
Networking companies of the United States
Companies based in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Communications in Massachusetts
Defense companies of the United States
In-Q-Tel
Technology companies established in 1948
Time-sharing companies
Raytheon Company
2009 mergers and acquisitions
2,148 words · 59 references · revision 1383613195 · CC BY-SA 4.0
BBN has its roots in an initial partnership formed on 15 October 1948 between Leo Beranek and Richard Bolt, professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.34 Bolt had won a commission to be an acoustic consultant for the new United Nations permanent headquarters to be built in New York City. Realizing the magnitude of the project at hand, Bolt had pulled in his MIT colleague Beranek for help and the partnership between the two was born. The firm, Bolt and Beranek, started out in two rented rooms on the MIT campus. Robert Newman joined the firm soon after in 1950, and the firm became Bolt Beranek Newman.5 Beranek remained the company's president and chief executive officer until 1967, and Bolt was chairman until 1976.
From 1957 to 1962, J. C. R. Licklider served as vice president of engineering psychology for BBN.6 Foreseeing the potential to obtain federal grants for basic computer research, Licklider convinced the BBN leadership to purchase a then state-of-the-art Royal McBeeLGP-30 digital computer in 1958 for US$25,000. Within a year, Ken Olsen, president of the newly formed Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), approached BBN to test the prototype of DEC's first computer, the PDP-1.7 Within one month, BBN completed its tests and recommendations of the PDP-1. BBN ultimately purchased the first PDP-1 for around US$150,000 and received the machine in November 1960.89
After the PDP-1 arrived, BBN hired two of Licklider's friends from MIT, John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky, as consultants.10 McCarthy had been unsuccessful in convincing MIT engineers to build time-sharing systems for computers. He had more success at BBN though, working with Ed Fredkin and Sheldon Boilen in implementing one of the first timesharing systems, the BBN Time-Sharing System.11 In 1962, BBN would install one such time-shared information system at Massachusetts General Hospital where doctors and nurses could create and access patients' information at various nurses' stations connected to a central computer.5 BBN would soon begin more research about integrating computers and medicine, hiring Bob Taylor in 1965 and MIT Lincoln Laboratory computer systems engineer Frank Heart in 1966.12
As BBN began focusing on computer technology, it gained a reputation as "the third university" in Cambridge alongside Harvard and MIT, and its offices expanded on a site near Fresh Pond in western Cambridge.13 By 1968, the company had over 600 employees.14 By the early 1970s, BBN bought a laundromat on Moulton Street and tore it down for a new, seven-story headquarters.15
In 1980, the U.S. federal government charged BBN with contracts fraud, alleging that from 1972 to 1978, BBN altered time sheets to hide overcharging the government. That year, two top financial officers plea bargained for suspended sentences and US$20,000 fines, and the company paid a US$700,000 fine.16
BBN's September 1994 celebration of the 25th anniversary of ARPANET generated much local and national news coverage from outlets including The Boston Globe, Newsweek, and National Public Radio.17 By that year, Heart retired from BBN after 28 years; his final position was president of the systems and technology division.18
Dr. Talib Hussain, senior scientist at BBN Technologies, looks over the shoulder of a recruit during a training session on the Virtual Environments for Ship and Shore Experiential Learning system at Recruit Training Command.
BBN is best known for its DARPA-sponsored research. It has made notable advances in a wide variety of fields, including acoustics, computer technologies, , and . In recent years, BBN has led a wide range of research and development projects, including the standardization effort for the security extension to the (), , advanced , the military's mobile shooter detection system, and spectrum use via the program. In the early 2000s, BBN created the world's first network, the , which operated for 3 years across Cambridge and Boston, and which included the world's first fully operational prototype of a . BBN also led the (GENI) project for the , which ultimately built out programmable "future Internet" infrastructure across approximately 60 university campuses.
5Beranek, Leo (2005). "BBN's earliest days: founding a culture of engineering creativity". IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 27 (2): 6–14. doi:10.1109/MAHC.2005.20. S2CID12645672.
6Henderson, Harry (2003), "Licklider, J.C.R.", , New York: Facts on File, p. 163,
In August 1968, BBN was selected by ARPA to build the Interface Message Processors (IMPs) for the ARPANET, the precursor to the modern Internet.20nb 1 The IMPs were the very first generation of gateways, known today as routers. Under the leadership of Frank Heart and Bob Kahn, four IMPs were produced for nearly US$1 million from September to December 1969.2122 The first IMP was shipped to the University of California, Los Angeles in September 1969 and the second to the Stanford Research Institute a month later.23 The first message between the two IMPs was "LO" — phonetically, "Hello" — but the SRI host crashed before the UCLA researcher could complete typing the "LOGIN" command.524
The architectural acoustics division of BBN faced controversy in the early 1960s with its acoustics design project for the Philharmonic Hall (now David Geffen Hall) at the Lincoln Center in New York City. Beranek and BBN's chief architect were criticized for ignoring important acoustical principles in concert hall design. Many failed minor adjustments led the walls, balconies, and ceilings to be torn out and dumped, and a new consultant oversaw a repair that cost millions of dollars over several years.13 The division also produced poor results at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. The hall's large volume and seating capacity initially resulted in less than ideal results. Kirkegaard Associates completed acoustical renovations in 1992 at a cost of US$10 million which resulted in substantial improvement.25
The substantial calculations required for acoustics work led to an interest, and later business opportunities, in computing. BBN was a pioneer in developing computer models of roadway and aircraft noise, and in designing noise barriers near highways.28 Some of this technology was used in landmark legal cases where BBN scientists were expert witnesses.29
In early 2004, BBN applied its acoustics expertise to design, develop, and deliver the Boomerang shooter detection system in a little over two months to combat the sniper threat US troops faced in Operation Iraqi Freedom. The system immediately pinpoints the location of hostile fire. Since then, more than 11,000 Boomerang systems have been deployed by U.S. and allied forces.
Ray Tomlinson of BBN is widely credited as having invented the first person-to-person network email in 1971 30 and the use of the @ sign in an email address.313233
BBN was a key participant in the creation of the Internet. It was the first organization to receive an Autonomous System Number (AS1) for network identification.42 ASNs are an essential identification element used for Internet Backbone Routing; lower numbers generally indicate a longer established presence on the Internet. AS1 is now operated by Level 3 Communications following their acquisition of BBN's Genuity internet service provider. BBN registered the bbn.com domain on 24 April 1985, making it the second oldest domain name on the internet.4344 In addition, BBN researchers participated in the development of TCP, created the Voice Funnel, an early predecessor of voice over IP, helped lead the creation of the first email security standard, Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM), chaired development of the "core" Internet Protocol security suite (IPsec) standards, and performed extensive work to secure the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).
In the 1970s, BBN created Telenet, Inc., to run the first public packet-switched network.
In 1983, BBN Instruments was sold to Vibro-Meter Corp..
In 1989, BBN's acoustical consulting business was spun off into a new corporation, Acentech Incorporated, located across the street from BBN headquarters in Cambridge.46
BBN formed an early Internet service provider in 1994 as its BBN Planet division.47 Previously traded as "BBN" on the stock market, the company was purchased by GTE in 1997 as a wholly owned subsidiary.48 BBN Planet was joined with GTE's national fiber network to become GTE Internetworking, "powered by BBN". When GTE and Bell Atlantic merged to become Verizon in 2000, the Internet service provider division of BBN was included in assets spun off as Genuity to satisfy Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requirements, leaving behind the remainder of BBN Technologies. Genuity was later acquired out of bankruptcy by Level 3 Communications in 2003.49 In March 2004, Verizon sold the remainder of the company, by then known as BBNT Solutions LLC, to a group of private investors from Accel Partners, General Catalyst Partners, In-Q-Tel and BBN's own management,50 making BBN an independent company for the next five years.
In September 2009, Raytheon entered into an agreement to acquire BBN as a wholly owned subsidiary.51 The acquisition was completed on 29 October 2009 52 and the company was valued at approximately US$350 million.53 BBN owned the domain bbn.com, the second oldest currently registered domain name on the Internet, which ran continuously from April 1985 to mid-December 2019.
Digital Force Technologies (DFT) of San Diego, California was a wholly owned BBN subsidiary, purchased in June 2008, and spun out in 2018.54
Former BBN employees have formed about a hundred startup companies, including Parlance Corporation and EveryZing.55
41Roberts, Dr. Lawrence G. (May 1995). "The ARPANET & Computer Networks". Archived from the original on 24 March 2016. Retrieved 13 April 2016. “Then in June 1966, Davies wrote a second internal paper, "Proposal for a Digital Communication Network" In which he coined the word packet,- a small sub part of the message the user wants to send, and also introduced the concept of an "Interface computer" to sit between the user equipment and the packet network.”
Raytheon was a business unit of RTX Corporation and is a major U.S. defense contractor and industrial corporation with manufacturing concentrations in weapons, military, and commercial electronics.
The Franklin Institute is a science museum and a center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin.
The National Medal of Technology and Innovation (formerly the National Medal of Technology) is an honor granted by the president of the United States to American inventors and innovators who have made significant contributions to the development of new and important technology.
A military exercise, training exercise, maneuver (American English), manoeuvre (Commonwealth English), drill or war game is the employment of military resources in training for military operations.
Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American retired politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017.
Technology research and development agency of the U.S. Department of Defense
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first computer networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite.
Speech recognition (automatic speech recognition (ASR), computer speech recognition, or speech-to-text (STT)) is a sub-field of computational linguistics concerned with methods and technologies that translate spoken language into text or other interpretable forms.
In computing, time-sharing is the concurrent sharing of a computing resource among many tasks or users by giving each task or user a small slice of processing time.
