Could you imagine your life without the internet? Probably not…. Did you know the internet went live in 1969? Back then it was called Arpanet. Do you know what kind of role Massachusetts had in creating the internet? There’s a small inconspicuous campus that sits over by Alewife station in Cambridge owned by a company called BBN or Bolt Beraneck and Newman.
This is the company that built the IMP or Interface Message Processor….which enabled communications between computers. Without the IMP…there is no internet. The IMP was the size of a fridge….but now that same work is done by that little ethernet port on the back of your laptop or PC or by your wireless chip. BBN went on to invent EMAIL and the @ symbal in 1971….could you imagine life without email?
Who knew we had all that history at the end of the Red Line….