Feb 2 2013
Raytheon BBN Technologies has been awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation for "sustained innovation through the engineering of first-of-a kind, practical systems in acoustics, signal processing, and information technology." President Barack Obama presented the medal in a White House ceremony Friday.
The National Medals are the highest honors that the U.S. government bestows upon scientists, engineers and inventors. The National Medal of Technology and Innovation recognizes individuals and organizations for making lasting contributions to America's competitiveness and quality of life and for helping to strengthen the nation's technological workforce. Raytheon BBN President Ed Campbell accepted the award on behalf of the organization.
"Raytheon BBN Technologies has been a unique organization since its founding," Campbell said. "I am honored to represent the men and women who, over the decades, have given their intellectual energies to solving some of the important technological challenges facing our nation. For the President of the United States to recognize our work with a National Medal, that is the ultimate honor for our company." Raytheon BBN Technologies is a wholly owned subsidiary of Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN).
Raytheon BBN's legacy of innovation in the areas recognized by the award includes identifying flight patterns to reduce jet engine noise in residential areas, reducing submarine noise underwater, and devising software for battlefield simulations, communications and computer networks.
Through the years, Raytheon BBN has been at the forefront of innovation. The organization developed packet switching and, with Department of Defense funding, launched the ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet, in 1969. Recently, Raytheon BBN has developed Boomerang, an acoustic sniper location system that has been widely deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Raytheon BBN has also helped to eliminate language barriers by developing a hand-held translation device called TransTalk that allows our soldiers and aid workers to converse naturally with local people in other countries. Today, Raytheon BBN scientists are working on tomorrow's breakthroughs in areas such as quantum information processing.