THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL INVENTORS OF ALL TIME

7 The 100 Most Influential Inventors of All Time 7

Internet—it was the common technological context in
which an entire generation of computer scientists came
of age. While at BB&N, Kahn had two major accomplish-
ments. First, he was part of a group that designed the
network’s Interface Message Processor, which would
mediate between the network and each institution’s host
computer. Second, and perhaps more important, in 1972
Kahn helped organize the first International Conference
on Computer Communication, which served as the
ARPANET’s public debut.
In 1972 Kahn left BB&N for DARPA’s Information
Processing Techniques Office (IPTO). Here he con-
fronted a set of problems related to the deployment of
packet switching technology in military radio and satellite
communications. However, the real technical problem
lay in connecting these disparate military networks—
hence the name Internet for a network of networks. As
program manager and later director of the IPTO, Kahn
worked closely with Cerf and others on the development
of the Internet’s technical protocol, TCP/IP, which sepa-
rated packet error checking (TCP) from issues related to
domains and destinations (IP). The protocol is the basis
for the Internet’s open architecture, which permits any
computer with the appropriate connection to enter the
network. In addition to his work on the Internet, Kahn
was the designer of the U.S. military’s Strategic Computing
Initiative during the administration of President Ronald
Reagan. Kahn also coined the phrase “national information
infrastructure” during this period.
Upon leaving IPTO in 1985, Kahn served as president
of the Corporation for the National Research Initiatives,
a not-for-profit group located in Reston, Va., and dedi-
cated to the development of network technologies for
the public. In 2001 he was among four individuals hon-
oured by the National Academy of Engineering with the