BBN was acquired by Raytheon in October 2009. BBN Technologies was established as Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. in 1948. From its roots as an acoustical design consulting firm, to the implementation and operation of the ARPANET (the forerunner of today's Internet) to the development of the first network e-mail (which established the @ sign as an icon for the digital age), BBN Technologies provided the same technical expertise and innovation to both government and commercial customers today. These areas of expertise include: quantum computing; system integration; distributed, collaborative applications; speech recognition; language understanding; wireless and satellite networking; network architecture and management; information security; structural acoustics; sensor signal processing; and real-time, multi-processor systems. BBN has more than 600 employees in offices across the US.