The first International Conference on Computer Communications was held October 24–26, 1972 in Washington, DC at the
Hilton Washington
The Washington Hilton is a hotel in Washington, D.C. It is located at 1919 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., roughly at the boundaries of the Kalorama, Dupont Circle, and Adams Morgan neighborhoods.
The Washington Hilton, located on the former site o ...
. It was organized by
BBN Technologies
Raytheon BBN (originally Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.) is an American research and development company, based next to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.
In 1966, the Franklin Institute awarded the firm the Frank P. Brown ...
under the direction of
Bob Kahn and was one of the first public demonstrations of computer networking technology and functionality as well as products of the
ARPANET
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first wide-area packet-switched network with distributed control and one of the first networks to implement the TCP/IP protocol suite. Both technologies became the technical foun ...
project.
IPTO Director
Lawrence Roberts, who would serve as the conference's chair, decided that the ICCC would be the ideal place to showcase the capabilities of ARPANET. With the help of
MIT professor
Al Vezza
Albert Vezza was a computer science professor and a founder of video game company Infocom.
Career
Vezza was the assistant director of MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and in charge of LCS's Dynamic Modeling (DM) group in the late 1970s ...
, Khan enlisted help from across the country of scientists and students working with ARPANET. A
Terminal Interface Processor was installed at the Hilton, connected to ARPANET by a dedicated phone line installed by
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile tel ...
, and then connected to dozens of terminals set up on the floor. The conference began with a VIP reception on the 22nd before opening on the 24th. The ARPANET demo was a "mind-blowing" success, connecting attendees to systems across the nation and abroad to engage them in a variety of activities, including interacting with an
air traffic control
Air traffic control (ATC) is a service provided by ground-based air traffic controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through a given section of controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled airsp ...
system and playing
computer chess. The success of the demo prompted an acceleration of the use and expansion of ARPANET, bringing the network closer to becoming the modern
internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...
.
References
Further reading
* ''Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet''
Katie Hafner (with Matthew Lyon) (Simon & Schuster, 1996) {{ISBN, 0-684-83267-4
External links
RFC #371 - Demonstration at International Computer Communications Conference
Computer conferences