prehysteries of new media: >> SRI (Stanford Research Institute), Manlo Park

<< preface

this blog is nina wenhart's collection of resources on the various histories of new media art. it consists mainly of non or very little edited material i found flaneuring on the net, sometimes with my own annotations and comments, sometimes it's also textparts i retyped from books that are out of print.

it is also meant to be an additional resource of information and recommended reading for my students of the prehystories of new media class that i teach at the school of the art institute of chicago in fall 2008.

the focus is on the time period from the beginning of the 20th century up to today.

2008-07-04

>> SRI (Stanford Research Institute), Manlo Park

http://www.sri.com/about/timeline/

from wikipedia
"In 1970, the Stanford Research Institute formally separated from Stanford University and, in 1977, became known as SRI International. The separation was a belated response to Vietnam war protesters at Stanford University who believed that SRI's DARPA-funded work was essentially making the university part of the military-industrial complex."

a bit of SRI-history, also from wikipedia:
"

In the 1950s, SRI worked under the direction of the Bank of America to develop ERMA (Electronic Recording Machine, Accounting), and magnetic ink character recognition (MICR) which as of 2007 is still the industry standard in automated check processing.^{[citation needed]} The ERMA project was led by computer scientist Jerre Noe, who was at the time SRI's Assistant Director of Engineering.

1960s

Doug Engelbart was the primary force behind the design and development of the oN-Line System, or NLS. He founded SRI's Augmentation Research Center (ARC), and his team there developed the original versions of many modern computer-human interface elements. These included: bit-mapped displays, collaboration software, hypertext, and precursors to the graphical user interface including the computer mouse. As a pioneer of human-computer interaction, Engelbart is arguably SRI's most notable alumnus. He was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 2000.

In 1964, Bill English, then chief engineer at the ARC, built the first prototype of a computer mouse from Engelbart's design. Originally they intended to call it a "turtle," but when a mouse ran across their workbench they changed their minds^{[citation needed]}.

In the 1960s, liquid crystal display (LCD) technology was developed at RCA Laboratories, which is now the Sarnoff Corporation, a wholly owned SRI subsidiary.

From 1966 through 1972, SRI's Artificial Intelligence Center developed the first mobile robot to reason about its actions. Named "Shakey", the robot had a television camera, a triangulating range finder, and bump sensors. Shakey the Robot used software for perception, world-modeling, and acting. The Artificial Intelligence Center marked its 40th anniversary in 2006.

Hewitt Crane and his colleagues developed the world's first all-magnetic digital computer,^[4], based upon extensions to magnetic core memories. The technology was licensed to AMP, who then used the technology to build specialized computers for controlling tracks in the New York City subway and on railroad switching yards.

In 1969, ARPANET, the world's first electronic computer network, was established on October 29 between nodes at Leonard Kleinrock's lab at UCLA and Douglas Engelbart's lab at SRI. Interface Message Processors at both sites served as the backbone of the first Internet.^[5]

In addition to SRI and UCLA, UCSB and the University of Utah were part of the original four network nodes. By December 5, 1969, the entire 4-node network was connected."