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 of ...

. 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 Robert Elliot Kahn (born December 23, 1938) is an American electrical engineer who, along with Vint Cerf, first proposed the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), the fundamental communication protocols at the hea ...

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 fou ...

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 The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

professor Al Vezza, Khan enlisted help from across the country of scientists and students working with ARPANET. A

Terminal Interface Processor A terminal server connects devices with a serial port to a local area network (LAN). Products marketed as terminal servers can be very simple devices that do not offer any security functionality, such as data encryption and user authentication. ...

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 te ...

, 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 airs ...

system and playing

computer chess Computer chess includes both hardware (dedicated computers) and software capable of playing chess. Computer chess provides opportunities for players to practice even in the absence of human opponents, and also provides opportunities for analysi ...

. 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 '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

References

External links

RFC #371 - Demonstration at International Computer Communications Conference
Computer conferences

References

Further reading

External links