Leo Beranek, an expert in acoustics, died on October 10. He was 102 years old. Beranek was the president of the acoustical consulting firm Bolt, Beranek, and Newman (BBN). This company worked on everything from designing classical concert halls and to creating mufflers for supersonic jets. It also made important advances in digital technology. In 1968, BBN created a network called Arpanet. The network joined together 19 different computers. By 1983, Arpanet had grown to over 500 users. It was so large that it was split in two and rejoined by TCP/IP protocol. This is often considered to be the beginning of the Internet. Beranek shaped email communications, too. In 1971, BBN sent the first email with the “@” symbol.
