Bob Kahn

Robert Elliot Kahn is an American electrical engineer. At Bolt Beranek and Newman he worked on the design of the Interface Message Processor, the ARPANET's packet switch, and in October 1972 organized the first public demonstration of the ARPANET at the International Computer Communication Conference.

Open-architecture networking

After moving to DARPA's Information Processing Techniques Office, Kahn formulated the idea of open-architecture networking: each network could keep its own internal design, with gateways and an end-to-end protocol linking them. He recruited Vint Cerf, and their 1974 paper described the protocol that became TCP/IP.

Later work

In 1986 Kahn founded the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, where he developed the Digital Object Architecture and the Handle System. He shared the 2004 ACM Turing Award and the 2005 Presidential Medal of Freedom with Cerf.

Timeline

• 1938-12-23Born in Brooklyn, New York.
• 1972-10Organizes the first public demonstration of the ARPANET at ICCC in Washington, D.C.
• 1974-05Co-authors the TCP paper with Vint Cerf.
• 1986Founds the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI).
• 2004Receives the ACM Turing Award with Vint Cerf.