BBN Founded Oct. 15th Oct. 15, 1948 In the 1950's and 1960's, BBN Hubert Lederer Technologies (originally Bolt, Beranek and Newman) was Dreyfus sometimes called the "third university” in Cambridge, after Born: Oct. 15, 1929; MIT and Harvard. The company Terre Haute, Indiana was founded by Died: April 22, 2017 and Richard Bolt, MIT professors, along with Bolt’s Dreyfus was known for his former student Robert Newman. sometimes harsh criticisms of AI, particularly its “biological” Many computer luminaries have and “psychological” Steve Crocker (2007). Photo worked at BBN, including assumptions, namely that the by Joi Ito. CC BY 2.0. Edmund Clarke [July 27], brain is analogous to hardware William Crowther [March 11], and that the mind performs Crocker also setup the Network Ed Fredkin [Oct 2], Bob Kahn discrete computations on Working Group, the forerunner [Dec 23], J. C. R. Licklider [March symbols. His book, “What of the Engineering Task 11], John McCarthy [Sept 4], Computers Can’t Do” (1972), Force (IETF; [Jan 16]) to Marvin Minsky [Aug 9], Severo discussed these problems at promote Internet standards, and Ornstein [Oct 23], Seymour some length. started the Request for Papert [Feb 29], Oliver Selfridge Comment (RFC; [April 7] 1979) [May 10], Bob Thomas [March One of his predictions was that a series of notes. He wrote the 15], and Ray Tomlinson [April program would never defeat first RFC and numerous others. 23]. even a 10-year-old at chess. In 1967, when this argument still Crocker attended the same high BBN was responsible for seemed plausible, several MIT school (Van Nuys High School in building the first Interface students and professors Los Angeles) as two other Message Processor [Aug 30], and (including Seymour Papert [Feb Internet pioneers, Jon Postel for the development of TCP/IP 29]) challenged Dreyfus to play [Aug 6] and Vint Cerf [June 23]. [Dec 00]. Other innovations a game against MacHack VI [Dec include the TENEX OS [Nov 29], 25]. Herbert Simon [June 15] mobile ad hoc networks, and the watched the match: “It was a RS statistical software. It's wonderful game - a real Harvard's Robot known for its parallel computing cliffhanger between two Super-Brain systems, including the Pluribus woodpushers with bursts of and the BBN Butterfly. The first insights and fiendish plans.” Oct. 15, 1944 virus and anti-virus were MacHack won. created there [March 15]. An article entitled "Harvard's For another famous critic of AI, Robot Super-Brain" appeared in It was also BBN engineers that see [July 31]. today's issue of the American determined that the 18-minute Weekly, written by Gobind gap in the Nixon Watergate Behari Lal (a “noted science tapes was made deliberately. analyst”), which described the Steve D. Crocker recently unveiled Automatic Born: Oct. 15, 1944; Sequence Controlled Calculator Radio Paging Pasadena, (ASCC [Aug 7]). Oct. 15, 1950 Crocker was part of the UCLA This piece was arguably the first team that developed the first report on computing to appear The first commercial radio ARPANET protocols, and also in a popular magazine, although paging service, Telanswerphone helped send the first message a more technical overview of the of NYC, sent the first message to between the first two nodes [Oct ASCC ("Robot Mathematician a doctor (who was playing golf 29]. Knows All The Answers") was at the time). published in Popular Science Specifically, he was responsible during the same month. Physicians paid $12 per month for the Network Control for the service and had to carry a Protocol (NCP), the first The next big publicity event for 7 oz. pager that could receive ARPANET host-to-host protocol, computers was the messages anywhere within 25 upon which services such as announcement of the ENIAC on miles of a transmitter tower. Call email and file transfer were [Feb 15] 1946. numbers were retransmitted built. NCP was eventually every minute for an hour. superceded by TCP/IP [Jan 1].

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The first telephone pager was used 74-series TTL chips, with Thompson [Feb 4] at Purdue patented in 1949 by Alfred J. the game's graphic elements University during the fourth Gross, who invented several stored in diode arrays. ACM Symposium on Operating other communications devices, Systems Principles. It was later They ran their first onsite test in including the first walkie-talkie, published in the July 1974 issue Aug, 1971 at the Dutch Goose CB radio, the cordless telephone, of CACM [Sept 15]. However, the bar at 3567 Alameda, Menlo and Dick Tracy’s Walkie Talkie first UNIX manual dates from wristwatch [Jan 13]. Park. This was one month prior [Nov 3] 1971. to "Galaxy Game" [Sept 00] (the other contender for first arcade The talk's audience was game) being installed in enthusiastic, and many people John Kenneth Stanford's Tresidder Union asked for copies of the system. building. Fortunately, the lawyers had Ousterhout decided that Bell could distribute UNIX to academic and Born: Oct. 15, 1954; research institutions, charging Solano County, California only for the cost of the media At the end of the 1980's, plus a shipping charge. Ousterhout developed the Tcl However, this license agreement scripting language (Tool was still enough bother to Command Language, or “tickle”) persuade people to develop and the Tk widget toolkit. their own UNIX variants, including BSD [March 9], Xenix Tcl/Tk became very popular, [Aug 25], AIX at IBM, and Solaris helped by claims that it could [Sept 4]. create a GUI 5-10 times faster than the C-based Motif toolkit The name UNIX was a pun on [Aug 6]. Multics [Nov 30] suggested by Brian Kernighan [Jan 1]. The "U" Ousterhout also led the group stands for "uniplexed", which that designed the Sprite was inspired in opposition to the distributed OS (1987), and was "multiplexing" in Multics. The the author of the Magic VLSI original spelling of the name was CAD system. The "Computer Space" arcade UNICS which stood for game. Photo by Hellis. “UNipIexed Information and Some quotes: “The greatest Computing Service.” Thompson performance improvement of all "Computer Space" officially and Ritchie disliked Multics’ is when a system goes from not- debuted at the "Music Operators complexity, favoring something working to working” and “If it of America" conference on this small and simple, better suited hasn’t been used, it doesn’t day, and was released at the end to the limited hardware of the work.” of Nov. Contrary to some time. accounts, the game wasn’t a runaway success. Bushnell later An alternative origin for "UNIX" Computer Space explained, “Sure, I loved it, and is that Peter Neumann watched all my friends loved it, but all my a demonstration of the Oct. 15-17, 1971 friends were engineers. It was a prototype and suggested UNICS little too complicated for the guy (pronounced “Eunuchs”) as a "Computer Space" by Syzygy with the beer in the bar.” reference to a “castrated Engineering (Nolan Bushnell However, its curvaceous fiber Multics”, but Ritchie has denied [Feb 5] and Ted Dabney [May glass cabinet did earn it a cameo this story. 2]) was probably the first arcade in the 1973 sci-fi movie Soylent One example of UNIX's video game. It was essentially a Green. simplicity was highlighted by derivative of Spacewar! [May the Multics developer Tom van 17] but without its two-player Syzygy was later incorporated as Vleck [Dec 00]: “I remarked to ability or a gravity well. Bushnell Atari [June 27], and its next Dennis [Ritchie] that easily half had seen Spacewar! at the game was the enormously the code I was writing in Multics University of Utah when he was successful Pong ([Nov 29] was error recovery code. He a student. 1972). said, ”We left all that stuff out. If Bushnell and Dabney had there’s an error, we have this wanted to implement the game routine called panic, and when it on a Data General Nova [April UNIX Presented is called, the machine crashes, 15], but that proved too and you holler down the hall, expensive. They then hit upon Oct. 15-17, 1973 ‘Hey, reboot it.’" the idea of replacing the costly The first academic paper on A quote from the programmer computer with custom UNIX was presented by Dennis Doug Gwyn: "UNIX was not hardware. Their final design Ritchie [Sept 9] and Ken designed to stop its users from

2 doing stupid things, as that messages. It also offered high Kare’s Cairo font, to create a would also stop them from transmission speeds (of about 4 larger icon for illustrating doing clever things. " Mbps) over ordinary telephone LaserWriter options [March 1]. wiring, and was relatively cheap Another quote, this time from The new graphic had a to install. In addition, IBM Scott Adams, the Dilbert [April somewhat bovine look (the argued that Token Ring was 16] cartoonist: "If you have any animal was spotted), and on this superior to Ethernet when the trouble sounding network was heavily loaded, but day was dubbed “the dogcow” condescending, find a UNIX user by Scott Zimmerman (or that claim was more open to to show you how it’s done." perhaps by Ginger Jernigan). In debate. April 1989, it was named Backed by IBM, the Token Ring “Clarus” by Mark Harlan, as a was quickly adopted by virtually joking reference to Claris [July Coleco Adam all of the company's large 10], Apple’s software unit. Oct. 15, 1983 corporate customers.

After the shipping date had slipped a few time, the Coleco Adam was eventually released Jerusalem Found as a follow up to the successful Oct. 15, 1987 ColecoVision console. It appeared to offer a lot for a low- The Jerusalem MS-DOS [Aug 12] price of $599, including a daisy- virus was so named because it DogCow in the Page setup dialog wheel printer, a sturdy was first detected in Jerusalem. of the LaserWriter 8. Author: keyboard, a 512 KB tape drive, Apple Inc. Once memory resident, it would and bundled software. However, set about infecting every a few design problems executing .com and .exe file by In the early to mid-1990's, remained. For example, every hooking into DOS's interrupt Clarus was spotted everywhere: time the user switched the processing services. As a result, in versions of QuickTime [Dec 2] system on or off , the power a typical PC XT [March 8] could (where it was revealed that supply emitted a strong when a dogcow barks, it makes electromagnetic pulse that could slow down to one fifth of its normal speed. The virus would the sound “Moof”), on mouse scramble or erase the data also delete any program run on a pads, t-shirts, and in the Icon stored on the tape cassettes; this Friday the 13th. That date Garden on Apple’s campus at issue was soon nicknamed the turned out to be good Infinite Loop (other icons in the “Adam bomb.” "marketing", and the garden included the watch, paint In addition, the Adam wouldn't rechristened “Friday the 13th” can, and eraser). work without the bulky printer virus was one of the earliest to Clarus became much harder to being attached to it, since the make headlines. It also find after Steve Jobs’ return to main power supply and switch encouraged hackers to quickly Apple [Sept 16] – the Icon were on the printer. This also knock together a large number Garden was removed, and Mac meant that if the printer failed, of variants. OS X [March 24] eschewed the then the entire system was out Fortunately, this partcular hack notion of whimsy. of commission. went away when MS Windows stopped using DOS interrupts [Aug 24]. Nevertheless, the last Token Ring reported Jerusalem incident was in 1995, nearly eight years after Oct. 15, 1985 the virus was discovered. IBM announced software to support its Token Ring network architecture developed at its The Dogcow Zurich Research Lab by Werner Bux and Hans Müller. Oct. 15 1987 The protocol was based on There were ten system fonts on continually passing a "token" the Apple Mac [Jan 24], all around the network, and only designed, with the exception of allowing a device to transmit Bill Atkinson’s [April 27] Venice data when it had possession of typeface, by Susan Kare [Feb 5], that token. This made the who also created most of the network's behavior more Mac’s icons. predictable compared to Apple engineer Annette Wagner Ethernet’s [June 23] contention- modified the “dog” glyph in based approach for sending

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