Two professors at MIT, Richard Bolt and Leo Beranek, established a small acoustics consulting firm, and soon added a former student of Bolt's, Robert Newman.

BBN won its first major consulting contract, designing the acoustics for the United Nations General Assembly Hall.

Discovered noise masking as a technique for privacy design of offices and libraries.

Developed theory of structural damping due to a layer of viscoelastic material between two layers of structural material.

BBN purchased its first computer, an LPG-30 manufactured by the Royal McBee company.

Developed artificial intelligence program for pattern recognition.

Leased Digital Equipment Corporation's first PDP-1, serial number 1.

Developed Composite Noise Rating (CNR) for airport noise, which was adopted by the DoD and FAA for military and civilian airports.

BBN commissioned by the Council on Library Resources to perform a two-year study on "Libraries of the Future."

Performed first public demonstration of computer time-sharing.

Designed and demonstrated the first voice modem, called DataDial, to enable remote communication with computers by telephone.

Developed Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) for solving problems of structural vibration in aerospace vehicles and surface ships.

BBN's J.C.R. Licklider published Libraries of the Future examining systems for information storage, organization, and retrieval; use of computers in libraries, and library question-answering systems.

Developed LOGO, the first interactive programming language for education.

Developed LUNAR, one of the earliest natural language systems.

Launched the ARPANET.

Developed TENEX, the first virtual memory operating system for Digital Equipment Corporation computers.

Sent first person-to-person email message using the @ sign.

Performed initial development of INTERLISP, a list processing programming language useful in artificial intelligence research.

Developed a geographically distributed facility for the monitoring and control of a packet-switched computer network, the first network operations center.

Developed the Private Line Interface (PLI) to encrypt messages over the ARPANET, demonstrating the first secure traffic sent over a packet switch network.

Implemented TELENET, a commercial network service, which later became part of SPRINT.

Developed Hear What I mean (HWIM), one of the earliest continuous speech recognition systems incorporating language understanding.

Developed the first Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) for Unix.

Developed first Internet routers in collaboration with Stanford University and University College, London.

Demonstrated Packet Broadcast Satellite communications over the Atlantic Ocean.

Demonstrated the feasibility of long-range automatic detection and recognition of airborne targets from submerged acoustic sensors in the open ocean using the AUSEX system sponsored by DARPA.

Deployed the Black-Crypto-Red (BCR), the first IP-based network encryption system and the first packet encryption system to implement remote re-keying and dynamic access control.

Led the technical work, wrote most of the reports, and testified before Congress on the acoustical analysis of Kennedy assassination tape.

Implemented the Wideband Packet-Switched Satellite System.

Built the Butterfly computer, the first parallel-processor with 128 processors and global memory.

Won contract to build and operate the worldwide Defense Data Network for DoD.

Launched BBN Communications, which built the communications infrastructures for major commercial customer networks, including MasterCard and MCI.

Demonstrated the Internet Private Line Interface (IPLI), an advanced tactical version of the Private Line Interface to protect Secret traffic across unsecured IP packet networks.

Received Institute Honor from the American Institute of Architects for pioneering work in architectural acoustics.

Developed SIMNET (Simulation Network) to interconnect microcomputer-based combat vehicle simulators on a common network.

bbn.com became the second commercial domain name registered on the Internet.

Developed Byblos, BBN's high-performance continuous speech recognition system.

Completed the acoustic design of NATO's research vessel, Alliance.

Created New England Academic and Research Network (NEARnet), a regional data communications network that operated at speeds up to 10Mb/s using microwave and leased communication links.

Developed the Defense Simulation Internet to carry data, voice, image, and video traffic used in military intelligence, operations, planning, and logistics in simulations and exercises.

Performed the first demonstration of an interactive, multistatic active acoustic processing and display system operated by Navy operators aboard an ASW aircraft.

Developed a unique representation for genetic algorithm schedulers, making it possible for computers to produce highly optimized solutions to extremely complex scheduling problems.

Won DARPA's outstanding Performance by a Contractor award for the Dynamic Analysis and Replanning Tool (DART), for modification and transportation feasibility analysis for Time-Phased Force and Deployment Data that was used during Desert Storm.

Introduced the BBN HARK Recognizer, the first real-time, speaker-independent speech recognizer for standard computers.

Implemented CO-NECT (Cooperative Networked Community of Tomorrow), a prototype school design program that used computer and networked communications technology as part of a project-based curriculum.

Demonstrated the first large vocabulary (20,000-words) continuous speech recognition system in real-time on a commercial, off-the-shelf computer.

Developed secure electronic mail system for the Department of Defense.

Formed BBN Planet, which later became one of the world's largest Internet Service Providers.

Developed the Gigabit Satellite Network for the provision of OC-3/OC-12 (155Mps/622Mps) services via NASA's experimental Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS).

Formed Parlance Corporation, which uses BBN's advanced speech recognition technology in its turnkey call routing service.

Chief Scientist Dr. Stephen Kent elected to co-chair the Internet Task Force Public Key Infrastructure Working Group.

Completed development of the Certificate Authority Workstation for supporting several critical Defense Message System (DMS) functions, including secure messaging, certification hierarchy support, cryptocard management, and DMS certificate creation and revocation.

BBN and four BBN scientists inducted into the U.S. Space Foundation's Space Technology Hall of Fame in recognition of work performed on the conception and development of the DARPA/NASA Gigabit Satellite Network.

Developed Distant Thunder, demonstrating the operational feasibility of autonomous multistatic active detection, classification, and localization of submarine targets using a field of acoustic sensors.

Purchased by GTE Corporation.

Developed Rough'nReady incorporating many speech and language processing technologies to extract information from speech and create indexed, searchable audio archives.

Completed development of the first multigigabit router.

IEEE Corporate Innovation Award "For contributions to networking technology through development of the first packet switches, ARPANET Interface Message Processor (IMP), and Terminal Interface Message Processor (TIP)."

Introduced Call Router, a natural language call routing system that allows users to speak in their own words and dialects.

BBN Technologies' parent company, GTE, merged with Bell Atlantic to form Verizon.

Chief Scientist John Makhoul awarded IEEE Third Millennium medal.

Earned NASA Commitment to Excellence Award.

Developed a cross-lingual document retrieval system that takes queries in English and retrieves documents in Arabic, Chinese, or Spanish.

Built and began operation of the world's first network protected by quantum cryptography.

Participated in development of the Ontology Web Language for the Semantic Web.

Achieved Optical Character Recognition milestone with a language-independent OCR application.

Developed the Source Path Isolation Engine, a single-packet IP traceback system.

Designed and implemented the first complete ad hoc networking system that uses directional antennas.

Earned the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Award of Distinction.

Dr. Leo Beranek, one of the three co-founders of BBN, received the National Medal of Science. one of the highest honors bestowed on scientists in this country.

Regained status as an independent company.

Principal Engineer Ray Tomlinson received the 2004 IEEE Internet Award for his key role in the conceptualization, first implementation, and standardization of networked email.

BBN's MicroThunder® system successfully demonstrated the use of BBN's advanced Multistatic Impulsive RF Sensor System in a portable wireless surveillance network designed to provide battlefield scene awareness.

Created the world's first metropolitan network protected by quantum cryptography.

BBN delivered the first 50 Boomerang shooter detection systems to meet an urgent need for sniper detection in Iraq just 66 days after receiving the request to develop such a system from the U.S. government.

BBN announced AVOKE STX, enabling multimedia search by transforming audio into searchable text.

Launched PodZinger (now EveryZing), the first podcast search engine that allows users to search the full audio of multi-media podcast as easily as they search for text.

BBN smashes speed barriers with the world's fastest detector for practical quantum cryptography, enabling faster, super secure communications over greater distances.

BBN's Stereoscopic Digital Mammography system shows significant improvement in the early detection of suspicious lesions in a clinical trial conducted at Emory University's Breast Imaging Center.

BBN delivers over 5000 Boomerang shooter detection systems to U.S. Army to protect soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

BBN named one of the Top Places to Work in Massachusetts by The Boston Globe.

BBN Principal Engineer Ray Tomlinson named Prince of Asturias Laureate for Technical and Scientific Research for the development of email and its advancement of human communications.

BBN Chief Scientist John Makhoul receives IEEE's highest award in speech processing, the IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award, for pioneering contributions to speech modeling.

Raytheon acquires BBN Technologies

Raytheon BBN Technologies achieves quantum information breakthrough.
Read the press release.

Chief Scientist Jim Barger Elected to NAE. Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer and honors those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice, or education. Dr. Barger’s NAE citation reads, “For applications of acoustic technology and engineering solutions for the benefit of national security and society."

UK MoD selects Raytheon BBN Technologies’ Boomerang shooter detection system Read more.

Principal Engineer Ray Tomlinson Inducted into Internet Hall of Fame