BBN

BBN Technologies was founded by MIT professors Leo Beranek, Richard Bolt and their former student Robert Newman in 1948 in Massachusetts. Originally BBN was an acoustic consulting company, responsible for example for the acoustic design of the United Nations assembly hall in New York.
BBN also played an importent role in the installation of the internet. BBN got probably most of its publicity from their works for packet-switching technology and the invention of the first routers, so-called IMPs (Interface Message Processor). These huge cases could be used by any computer system for data transfer between the first four nodes of the ARPANET and beyond.
UN general assembly hall at BBN

In 1971 BBN itself connected to the ARPANET via an IMP and became one of the very first 15 nodes of the internet. The same year BBN-employee Ray Tomlinson developed an e-mail program, enabling the sending of messages across the network. The use of the “@” symbol, separating host- and username in e-mail addresses, can be traced back to Tomlinson as well. Besides Tomlinson, Bob Kahn and J.C.R. Licklider have also been working for BBN at one time.
Other milestones from BBN contributing to the evolution of the internet have been the works for the development of the TCP protocol, as well as their contribution to the installation of CSNET. Further Achievements of BBN in the computer industry have been the development of the programming language LOGO, the operating system TENEX or the encryption standards for packet-switching used by NSA, DARPA and U.S. Air Forc.
Nonetheless BBN has never given up their original field of work – the acoustic. Today BBN works on new methods for acoustic insulation and on concepts for computer-based speech recognition.