Raytheon buys BBN for 'about $350m'
Renowned techsploration company BBN - famed far and wide for inventing forerunner internet kit, and for giving the world the "@" symbol in email addresses - has been bought by US armsbiz colossus Raytheon. The move illustrates growing aspirations on the part of arms firms to do business in the information systems sector. …
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Wasn't BBN
Compuserves owner ? Ah, the good old days.
Mine' the one with reminesents in it.
Arms manufacturer owns email???
Does that mean that all peaceniks now have to communicate by snail-mail for conscientious objection reasons?
"arms firms to do business in the information systems sector"
Yeah because spying on us all is becoming very big business!
Owned Telenet
Alien, BBN never owned Compuserve. It did own the pioneering packet-switched carrier Telenet, selling it to GTE around 1980. It dabbled in all sorts of related technologies over the years.
BBN's biggest attraction to Raytheon was probably its Boomerang shot-spotter. BBN started as an acoustics company (1948) and still has serious military acoustics skill, including this system that uses an array of microphones and some fast computing to determine where a bullet was fired from. Its work is >90% federal, like Raytheon.
And Tel, bear in mind that the Internet evolved from a private Pentagon network. BBN built the ARPAnet starting in 1969. (ARPA=DoD) It became "Internet" in the early 1980s when MILnet became a separate operation, linked to the research (universities, etc.) ARPAnet. Peaceniks have never objected to making non-military use of this technology, regardless of its provenance.
@Fred Goldstein
"bear in mind that the Internet evolved from a private Pentagon network."
The first two nodes of what became TehIntraWebTubes were at SRI and UCLA, run by students and professors. With no Pentagon oversight. Money, yes. Oversight, no.
I haven't thought about it in years, but one of the first IMPs was cold, dark & gathering dust in a closet next to my office when I was at SAIL ... It was a highly modified Honeywell DDP 516, if I remember correctly. I should have "borrowed" it when I had the chance. I'll bet a nickle its still there, and nobody knows what it is ... I think I'll go look next time I'm at Stanford :-)
Doubleplus good
"defence giant" indeed.
Unless fighting off the incensed locals in the various countries which you are busy "introducing to democracy" counts as "defence" I guess.
Raytheon make their money from providing arms with which the US fights its various wars. Defence hardly comes into it.
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