Chronology of Events - 1960s

The following is a chronological listing of significant events in the development of the field of Information Technology law during the 1960s:

1960
1960 &mdash; AT&T introduces the Dataphone, the first commercial modem.

1960 &mdash; COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) is developed at the Department of Defense by Grace M. Hopper.

March 1960 &mdash; J.C.R. Licklider publishes "Man-Computer Symbiosis."

October 1960 &mdash; UCLA hosts the First National Conference on Law and Electronics at Lake Arrowhead, California.

November 1960 &mdash; Roy N. Freed publishes the first article on computer law: “A Lawyer’s Guide Through the Computer Maze,” in the The Practical Lawyer.

1961
May 31, 1961 &mdash; The first paper on packet switching theory: Leonard Kleinrock, "Information Flow in Large Communication Nets," is published in RLE Quarterly Progress Report.

1962
August 1962 &mdash; The first paper on the concept of the Internet is published: J.C.R. Licklider & Welden Clark, "On-Line Man Computer Communication."

October 1962 &mdash; DARPA is founded.

1963
1963 &mdash; The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is developed to standardize data exchange among computers.

1963 &mdash; The Sketchpad graphics system is developed by Ivan Sutherland at MIT.

1963 &mdash; Complimentary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology is developed by Frank Wanless at Fairchild Semiconductor.

1964
1964 &mdash; Paul Baran (RAND) publishes "On Distributed Communications Networks," which described the Internet and digital packet switching (full-text).

1964 &mdash; The CDC 6600, the first "super computer," is designed by Seymour Cray and built by Control Data Corporation.

1965
1965 &mdash; In "A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate," Ted Nelson coins the term "hypertext," which refers to text that is not necessarily linear.

1965 &mdash; Donald Davies of the British National Physical Laboratory (NPL) begins thinking about packet networks and coins the term "packet."

1965 &mdash; Alan Kay at MIT has the idea for a notebook computer.

April 19, 1965 &mdash; Gordon Moore declares that computing power will double every 18 months, a prophecy that is known as Moore's Law.

1966
1966 &mdash; IBM develops DRAM ("Dynamic Random Access Memory"), which allows fast, compact, reliable and inexpensive data storage on computer systems. By the mid-1970s, DRAM becomes the standard for virtually all computers.

February 1966 &mdash; ARPANET is founded.

1969
1969 &mdash; D. Ritchie and K. Thompson at AT&T Bell Laboratories develop the UNIX operating system to make porting software applications easier. It was first licensed to universities, and later to corporations. It then became the backbone of the Internet.

1969 &mdash; CompuServe, the first commercial online service, is established.

January 17, 1969 &mdash;  United States attorney general Ramsey Clark charges IBM with unlawful monopolization of the computer industry, and requests the federal courts break it up. (13 years later, the U.S. Justice Department will drop the case.)

June 23, 1969 &mdash; IBM adopts a new marketing policy that charges separately for most systems engineering activities, future computer programs, and customer education courses. This "unbundling" gives rise to a multibillion-dollar software and services industry.

September 1, 1969 &mdash; First Internet node is installed at UCLA. 

October 1, 1969 &mdash; Node 2 of the Internet is installed at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI).

October 29, 1969 &mdash; First data packets are sent from UCLA to SRI. The first attempt results in the system crashing as the letter G of LOGIN is entered.

November 1, 1969 &mdash; Node 3 of the Internet is installed at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB).

November 21, 1969 &mdash; The first computer-to-computer login takes place between SRI and UCLA.

December 1969 &mdash; Node 4 of the Internet is installed at the University of Utah.

December 1969 &mdash; ARPANet (the Advanced Research Projects Agency network) goes live, connecting four major U.S. universities.