BBN Technologies

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(Redirected from Bolt, Beranek and Newman)

BBN Technologies (originally Bolt Beranek and Newman) is a high-technology company that provides research and development services. BBN is based next to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. It is perhaps best known for its work in the development of packet switching (including the ARPANET and the Internet) and for its 1978 acoustical analysis for the House Select Committee on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but it is also a defense contractor, primarily for DARPA.

1 1948 foundation
2 The 1990s and computer technologies
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] 1948 foundation

Founded in 1948, by Leo Beranek and Richard Bolt, professors at MIT, with Bolt's former student Robert Newman, Bolt, Beranek and Newman started life as an acoustical consulting company. Their first contract was consultation for the design of the acoustics of the United Nations Assembly Hall in New York. Subsequent commissions included MIT's Kresge Auditorium (1954), Tanglewood's Koussevitzky Music Shed (1959), and Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall (1962). They have examined the Richard Nixon tape with the 18 minutes erased during the Watergate scandal and the Dictabelt evidence that was purportedly a recording of the JFK assassination.

In 1989, BBN's acoustical consulting business was spun off into a new corporation, Acentech Inc., also based in Cambridge.

Work in acoustics then required substantial calculations that 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. Some of this technology was used in landmark legal struggles where BBN scientists were expert witnesses. BBN bought a number of computers in the late 1950s and early 1960s, notably the first production PDP-1 from Digital Equipment Corporation.

[edit] The 1990s and computer technologies

BBN was acquired by GTE in 1998. When GTE and Bell Atlantic merged to become Verizon, in 2000, the ISP portion of BBN was included in assets spun off as Genuity. In March of 2004, Verizon sold BBN to a group of private investors, and as of 2007 BBN is a privately held company.

Some of BBN's developments of note in the field of computer networks are the implementation and operation of the ARPANET; the first person-to-person network email sent and the use of the @ sign in an email address; the first Internet protocol router; the Voice Funnel, an early predecessor of voice over IP; and work on the development of TCP. Other well-known BBN computer-related innovations include the first time-sharing system, the LOGO programming language, the TENEX operating system, the Colossal Cave Adventure (ADVENT) game, the first link-state routing protocol, and a series of mobile ad-hoc networks starting in the 1970s. BBN also is well-known for its parallel computing systems, including the Pluribus, and the BBN Butterfly computers, which have been used for such tasks as warfare simulation for the U.S. Navy.

BBN Planet was long the owner of AS1.

A number of well-known computer luminaries have worked full- or part-time at BBN, including Jerry Burchfiel, William Crowther, John Curran, Wally Feurzeig, Ed Fredkin, Bob Kahn, J. C. R. Licklider, John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Seymour Papert, Oliver Selfridge, and Ray Tomlinson.

BBN currently is leading a wide range of R&D projects, including the standardization effort for Internet security architecture (IPsec), the networking technology in the JTRS communication system, mobile ad-hoc networks, advanced speech recognition and quantum cryptography.