Bolt, Beranek and Newman was one of the pioneer companies in the world of computers. Two MIT professors, Richard Bolt and Leo Beranek, started up a small acoustical consulting company in 1948. With the addition of Robert Newman, Bolt Baranek and Newman or BBN, was born.
Throughout the 1950s, the company was mainly involved in acoustical instruments and research, making huge advancements in this field. In 1958 the company bought it’s first computer, an LDP-30. In the 1960s BBN began it’s famous forray into computing building components for the PDP-1. Some of the company’s most notable achievements include the first demo of computer time sharing, the first public demo of an electronic communications system, creating LOGO, invention of packet switching, and building the ARPANET. It was also a BBN employee that invented email and the first routers. Clearly, BBN has played a large role in the shape of computer science only on a par with IBM. BBN still operates today in Cambridge, MA. where it continues to build and research electronic components, acoustic engineering, and computer science. If it hadn’t been for BBN, you wouldn’t be reading this right now!
