BBN

Type:	Public
Industry:	ICT Industry
Founded:	1940
Founder(s):	Richard Bolt Leo Beranek Robert Newman
Headquarters:	10 Moulton Street Cambridge, MA 02138
Country:	USA
Website:	www.bbn.com
Key People
Robert G. Elmer, President

BBN (Bolt, Beranek and Newman Inc.) now Raytheon BBN Technologies is one of the leading Research and Development companies in the United States dedicated in providing high-technology products and services to consumers. The company specializes in speech recognotion technologies, cyber security, advanced networking, sensor systems and information & knowledge technologies. BBN was one of the research companies involved in the development of ARPANET, which became the internet. The company was known for developing the packet switching, the first network e-mail and the first router. Robert G. Elmer serves as president of the company and its' main office is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Birth of BBN

BBN originated from the acoustics consulting firm founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professors Richard Bolt and Leo Beranek. Both men were in-charge of the MIT Acoustical Laboratory, which was known as the leading leading research and teaching laboratory in acoustics. Wallace Harrison, the architect who designed the United Nations headquarters in New York City asked MIT to provide consulting services for the acoustic design of the General Assembly Hall. The bidding request was passed down to Bolt and he won the contract. He figured that the job was too big and he cannot handle alone. He asked Beranek to help him with the project. At that time, the MIT administration was not interested in providing commercial consulting services but the institute allowed its employees to provide private consultancies during their free days. MIT rented out two rooms to Bolt and Beranek as their initial office and encouraged them to create a partnership, which was formed on November 1948. During the early years, Bolt and Beranek were working on the acoustical design of the UN General Assembly Hall, General radio Company and for New York City movie theaters that were previously awarded to Beranek. They were also providing noise control consultancies for some establishments. In 1950, Robert Newman became a partner of the firm. The partnership became Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) Inc. From an acoustics consulting firm the partnership became an innovative research and development company.

BBN became bigger during the 1950s. The partnership moved from the rented rooms at MIT to another office and eventually occupied a three storey building in Cambridge. Because of the rapid growth of the partnership, BBN was incorporated in 1953. Beranek resigned from MIT and served as Chairman and CEO of the company. In 1957, J.C.R. Licklider joined the company as vice president and head psychoacoustics, engineering psychology and information systems research departments. In 1958, he encouraged Beranek to buy a computer. Althought at the time he doesn't know what to do with the computer, he told Beranek that the company needs to get into the computer business to become famous and they need to learn what they can do to the computer. BBN purchased its first computer (LPG-30) worth $30,000 from Royal McBee company. The company had five research divisions including acoustics, life and information sciences, noise control, applied physics. Two of the division were involved in digital computing. Some of BBN's significant discoveries during the period include the voice masking for privacy, muffling system for Boeing aircraft which reduced the noise cause by the propeller by 15 decibels, structural dumping and the development of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) program for pattern recognition.

BBN's Entry in Computing Research

In 1961, BBN suffered a major setback when the specifications for the acoustic design of the Philharmonic Hall at the Lincoln Center in New York was not implemented by the architect. BBN spent millions of dollars and it took the company three years to modify the acoustic design of the hall. BBN's reputation in acoustical design was damaged by the contract. Beranek decided to redirect the company and engaged in other areas of research development. Licklider took the opportunity to push his vision in computing research. With Beranek's support, Licklider lead a group of computer researchers in pursuing time sharing using his paper entitled "Man-Computer Symbiosis" as guide that was published in 1960.His group developed and performed the first public demonstration of computer time sharing using the PDP-1 computer, which was purchased by BBN from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). The development of time sharing led the company to pursue further research in network computing and created applications such as debugging, computer calculations and text editing. BBN hired John Swets to take over the computer research projects of Licklider when he left the company to serve as head of the Behavioral Sciences Office and the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) of the Advanced Projects Research Agency (ARPA)on October 1962. BBN's computer research department flourished and hired more than 600 computer experts by 1968. During that time, the company's computer research department was working in three areas including artificial intelligence, computer graphics and computer systems.

BBN and the ARPANET

The ARPANET was a project of the IPTO funded by the Defense Advance Research Agency (DARPA) which evolved as the internet today. The plan for the ARPANET was developed by Licklider during his tenure as Director of the agency from 1962 to 1964. Licklider envisioned a universal network. Inspired by this vision, his successors Ivan Sutherland and Robert Taylor both served as IPTO director and Lawrence Roberts who served as ARPANET program manager pushed for the development of wide area communications network. In 1968, the IPTO issued a Request for Quotation for the development of Interface Message Processors (IMP) for 140 companies, BBN submitted a detailed proposal for the project. IPTO awarded the contract to the company. The BBN team was led by Frank Heart with Boh Kahn, a communications theoretician expert responsible in error control and identifying problems related with sending data over the telephone lines; Severo Ornstein and Ben Barker, in-charge of hardware development while Will Crowther, Bernie Cosell and Dave Walden were responsible for the software development. BBN collaborated with the research teams from the first four sites selected by Roberts to be connected in the ARPANET including the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Stanford Research Institute (SRI), University of California at Santa Barbara and University of Utah. The UCLA Team composed of Vinton Cerf, Steve Crocker, Bill Naylor, Jon Postel, and Mike Wingfield were responsible in installing the first IMP delivered by BBN to the Network Messaging Center of UCLA and created the first ARPANET node. The first message sent through the network was "Do it to it, Truett" as a tribute to BBN engineer Truett Thach who brought the computer to UCLA from Cambridge. The exchange of communication was successful. When the succeeding BBN IMPs were connected to the three sites in 1969, ARPANET was born. The growth of ARPANET was rapid. By 1975, the management of the military side of the ARPANET was handled by Defense Systems Information Agency (DISA) while the non-military network was managed by the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET). The ARPANET ceased in 1990.