Information Processing Techniques Office

The Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), originally "Command and Control Research", was part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the United States Department of Defense.

According to an ARPA-sponsored history of the organization, IPTO grew from a distinctly unpromising beginning: the Air Force had a large, expensive computer (AN/FSQ 321A) which was intended as a backup for the SAGE air defense program, but no longer needed; and it also had too few required tasks to maintain the desired staffing level at its main software contractor, the System Development Corporation (SDC). Accordingly, the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering decided to capitalize on these "sunk costs" and SDC expertise by standing up an ARPA program in Command & Control Research. It was accordingly begun in June 1961 with an initial budget of $5.8 million, to include shipping, installation, and checking out the computer at SDC facilities. This new ARPA program was envisioned to "support research on the conceptual aspects of command and control."

Most fortunately, ARPA then hired J.C.R. Licklider away from Bolt, Beranek and Newman to be IPTO's first director. Licklider started work in October 1962, and until his term ended in 1964, he "...initiated three of the most important developments in information technology: the creation of computer science departments at several major universities, time-sharing, and networking". By the late 1960s, his promotion of the concept had inspired a primitive version of his vision called ARPANET, which expanded into a network of networks in the 1970s that became the Internet.

Licklider described how he had re-envisioned command and control research as research into interactive computing as follows:

Licklider quickly set about detaching the program from its sole reliance on a surplus Air Force computer and single industrial contractor. As he recalled:

Under Licklider's direction, the stated mission of IPTO was:

Ivan Sutherland replaced J. C. R. Licklider as IPTO's director when Licklider left ARPA in 1964. Sutherland was 26 years old at the time. Bob Taylor was hired as Sutherland's assistant in 1965 and became director in 1966.

During Taylor's tenure, the IPTO facility consisted of a spacious office for the director in Ring D of The Pentagon and a small "terminal room" with remote terminals to mainframe computers at MIT, the University of California, Berkeley and the AN/FSQ-32 in Santa Monica. The staff at the Pentagon consisted of the director and his secretary. The budget was $19 million which funded computer research projects at MIT and other institutions in Massachusetts and California.

In 1966 Taylor went to ARPA, on Ring E, for funding to create a computer network that used interactive computing. He got $1 million and hired Lawrence Roberts to manage the project.

IPTO was combined with the Transformational Convergence Technology Office (TCTO) to form the Information Innovation Office (I2O) in 2010.

• ARPANET: directed by Bob Taylor 1966–1969.
• BICA: project to create "Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures"
• Bootstrapped Learning: a project to bring about "instructable computing" by driving the creation of machine learning algorithms that are responsive to models of human-to-human instruction
• LifeLog, an IPTO project "to trace the 'threads' of an individual's life in terms of events, states, and relationships" by creating "an ontology-based (sub)system that captures, stores, and makes accessible the flow of one person's experience in and interactions with the world in order to support a broad spectrum of associates/assistants and other system capabilities".
• FORESTER: a program to develop a helicopter-borne radar system that can detect soldiers and vehicles moving underneath foliage cover
• VIRAT: analysis and storage of video surveillance data
• Deep Green: U.S. Army battlefield decision-making support system
• Heterogeneous Urban RSTA Team: aerial surveillance program designed to monitor cities with self-directed UAVs
• High Productivity Computing Systems: project for developing a new generation of economically viable high productivity computing systems for national security and industry in the 2007 to 2010 timeframe

• Norberg, Arthur Lawrence; O'Neill, Judy Elizabeth; Freedman, Kerry J. (1996). Transforming Computer Technology: Information Processing for the Pentagon, 1962-1986. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-5152-0.

• Oral history interview with J. C. R. Licklider at Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Licklider was the first director of IPTO.
• Oral history interview with Jack P. Ruina Charles Babbage Institute - interview is mainly concerned with the beginning of the Information Processing Techniques Office within ARPA: the initial goals, how the idea of an information processing program was initiated, the selection of the first director. Ruina was Director of ARPA from 1961-1963.
• Oral-history interview with Ivan Sutherland at Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota. Sutherland headed the IPTO in the mid-1960s and oversaw computer projects in graphics and networking, the ILLIAC IV, and the Macromodule program.
• Oral history interview with Lawrence G. Roberts Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Roberts directed IPTO during 1968-1973
• Official IPTO Homepage