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IBM Personal Computer

The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team of engineers and designers at International Business Machines (IBM), directed by William C. Lowe and Philip Don Estridge in Boca Raton, Florida.

The machine was based on open architecture and third-party peripherals. Over time, expansion cards and software technology increased to support it.

The PC had a substantial influence on the personal computer market. The specifications of the IBM PC became one of the most popular computer design standards in the world. The only significant competition it faced from a non-compatible platform throughout the 1980s was from Apple's Macintosh product line, as well as consumer-grade platforms created by companies like Commodore and Atari. Most present-day personal computers share architectural features in common with the original IBM PC, including the Intel-based Mac computers manufactured from 2006 to 2022.

History
Prior to the 1980s, IBM had largely been known as a provider of business computer systems. As the 1980s opened, their market share in the growing minicomputer market failed to keep up with competitors, while other manufacturers were beginning to see impressive profits in the microcomputer space. The market for personal computers was dominated at the time by Tandy, Commodore, and Apple, whose machines sold for several hundred dollars each and had become very popular. The microcomputer market was large enough for IBM's attention, with $15 billion in sales by 1979 and projected annual growth of more than 40% during the early 1980s. Other large technology companies had entered it, such as Hewlett-Packard, Texas Instruments and Data General, and some large IBM customers were buying Apples.

As early as 1980 there were rumors of IBM developing a personal computer, possibly a miniaturized version of the IBM System/370, and Matsushita acknowledged publicly that it had discussed with IBM the possibility of manufacturing a personal computer in partnership, although this project was abandoned. The public responded to these rumors with skepticism, owing to IBM's tendency towards slow-moving, bureaucratic business practices tailored towards the production of large, sophisticated and expensive business systems. As with other large computer companies, its new products typically required about four to five years for development, and a well publicized quote from an industry analyst was, "IBM bringing out a personal computer would be like teaching an elephant to tap dance."

IBM had previously produced microcomputers, such as 1975's IBM 5100, but targeted them towards businesses; the 5100 had a price tag as high as $20,000. Their entry into the home computer market needed to be competitively priced.

In 1980, IBM president John Opel, recognizing the value of entering this growing market, assigned William C. Lowe and Philip Don Estridge as heads of the new Entry Level Systems unit in Boca Raton, Florida. Market research found that computer dealers were very interested in selling an IBM product, but they insisted the company use a design based on standard parts, not IBM-designed ones so that stores could perform their own repairs rather than requiring customers to send machines back to IBM for service. Another source cites time pressure as the reason for the decision to use third-party components.

Atari proposed to IBM in 1980 that it act as original equipment manufacturer for an IBM microcomputer, a potential solution to IBM's known inability to move quickly to meet a rapidly changing market. The idea of acquiring Atari was considered but rejected in favor of a proposal by Lowe that by forming an independent internal working group and abandoning all traditional IBM methods, a design could be delivered within a year and a prototype within 30 days. The prototype worked poorly but was presented with a detailed business plan which proposed that the new computer have an open architecture, use non-proprietary components and software, and be sold through retail stores, all contrary to IBM practice. It also estimated sales of 220,000 computers over three years, more than IBM's entire installed base.

This swayed the Corporate Management Committee, which converted the group into a business unit named "Project Chess", and provided the necessary funding and authority to do whatever was needed to develop the computer in the given timeframe. The team received permission to expand to 150 people by the end of 1980, and in one day more than 500 IBM employees called in asking to join.

Design process
The design process was kept under a policy of strict secrecy, with all other IBM divisions kept in the dark about the project.

Several CPUs were considered, including the Texas Instruments TMS9900, Motorola 68000 and Intel 8088. The 68000 was considered the best choice, but was not production-ready like the others. The IBM 801 RISC processor was also considered, since it was considerably more powerful than the other options, but rejected due to the design constraint to use off-the-shelf parts. The TMS9900 was rejected as it was inferior to the Intel 8088.

IBM chose the 8088 over the similar but superior 8086 because Intel offered a better price for the former and could provide more units, and the 8088's 8-bit bus reduced the cost of the rest of the computer. The 8088 had the advantage that IBM already had familiarity with the 8085 from designing the IBM System/23 Datamaster. The 62-pin expansion bus slots were also designed to be similar to the Datamaster slots, and its keyboard design and layout became the Model F keyboard shipped with the PC, but otherwise the PC design differed in many ways.

The 8088 motherboard was designed in 40 days, with a working prototype created in four months, demonstrated in January 1981. The design was essentially complete by April 1981, when it was handed off to the manufacturing team. PCs were assembled in an IBM plant in Boca Raton, with components made at various IBM and third party factories. The monitor was an existing design from IBM Japan; the printer was manufactured by Epson. Because none of the functional components were designed by IBM, they obtained only a handful of patents on the PC, covering such features as the bytecoding for color monitors, DMA access operation, and the keyboard interface. They were never enforced.

Many of the designers were computer hobbyists who owned their own computers, including many Apple II owners, which influenced the decisions to design the computer with an open architecture and publish technical information so others could create compatible software and expansion slot peripherals.

During the design process IBM avoided vertical integration as much as possible, for example choosing to license Microsoft BASIC rather than utilizing the in-house version of BASIC used for mainframes due to the better existing public familiarity with the Microsoft version.

Debut
The IBM PC debuted on August 12, 1981, after a twelve-month development. Pricing started at $1,565 for a configuration with 16 KB RAM, Color Graphics Adapter, keyboard, and no disk drives. The price was designed to compete with comparable machines in the market. For comparison, the Datamaster, announced two weeks earlier as IBM's least expensive computer, cost $10,000.

IBM's marketing campaign licensed the likeness of Charlie Chaplin's character "The Little Tramp" for a series of advertisements based on Chaplin's movies, played by Billy Scudder.

The PC was IBM's first attempt to sell a computer through retail channels rather than directly to customers. Because IBM did not have retail experience, they partnered with the retail chains ComputerLand and Sears, who provided important knowledge of the marketplace   and became the main outlets for the PC. More than 190 ComputerLand stores already existed, while Sears was in the process of creating a handful of in-store computer centers for sale of the new product.

Reception was overwhelmingly positive, with analysts estimating sales volume in the billions of dollars in the first few years after release. After release, IBM's PC immediately became the talk of the entire computing industry. Dealers were overwhelmed with orders, including customers offering pre-payment for machines with no guaranteed delivery date. By the time the machine began shipping, the term "PC" was becoming a household name.

Success
Sales exceeded IBM's expectations by as much as 800% (9x), with the company at one point shipping as many as 40,000 PCs per month. IBM estimated that home users made up 50 to 70% of purchases from retail stores. In 1983, IBM sold more than 750,000 machines, while Digital Equipment Corporation, one of the companies whose success had spurred IBM to enter the market, sold only 69,000.

Software support from the industry grew rapidly, with the IBM nearly instantly becoming the primary target for most microcomputer software development. One publication counted 753 software packages available a year after the PC's release, four times as many as were available for the Macintosh a year after its launch. Hardware support also grew rapidly, with 30–40 companies competing to sell memory expansion cards within a year.

By 1984, IBM's revenue from the PC market was $4 billion, more than twice that of Apple. A 1983 study of corporate customers found that two thirds of large customers standardizing on one computer chose the PC, while only 9% chose Apple. A 1985 Fortune survey found that 56% of American companies with personal computers used PCs while 16% used Apple.

Almost as soon as the PC reached the market, rumors of clones began, and the first legal PC-compatible clone—the MPC 1600 by Columbia Data Products—was released in June 1982, less than a year after the PC's debut.

Eventually, IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo in 2004.

Hardware
For low cost and a quick design turnaround time, the hardware design of the IBM PC used entirely "off-the-shelf" parts from third party manufacturers, rather than unique hardware designed by IBM.

The PC is housed in a wide, short steel chassis intended to support the weight of a CRT monitor. The front panel is made of plastic, with an opening where one or two disk drives can be installed. The back panel houses a power inlet and switch, a keyboard connector, a cassette connector and a series of tall vertical slots with blank metal panels which can be removed in order to install expansion cards.

Internally, the chassis is dominated by a motherboard which houses the CPU, built-in RAM, expansion RAM sockets, and slots for expansion cards.

The IBM PC was highly expandable and upgradeable, but the base factory configuration included:

Motherboard
The PC is built around a single large circuit board called a motherboard which carries the processor, built-in RAM, expansion slots, keyboard and cassette ports, and the various peripheral integrated circuits that connected and controlled the components of the machine.

The peripheral chips included an Intel 8259 PIC, an Intel 8237 DMA controller, and an Intel 8253 PIT. The PIT provides 18.2 Hz clock "ticks" and dynamic memory refresh timing.

CPU and RAM
The CPU is an Intel 8088, a cost-reduced form of the Intel 8086 which largely retains the 8086's internal 16-bit logic, but exposes only an 8-bit bus. The CPU is clocked at 4.77 MHz, which would eventually become an issue when clones and later PC models offered higher CPU speeds that broke compatibility with software developed for the original PC. The single base clock frequency for the system was 14.31818 MHz, which when divided by 3, yielded the 4.77 MHz for the CPU (which was considered close enough to the then 5 MHz limit of the 8088), and when divided by 4, yielded the required 3.579545 MHz for the NTSC color carrier frequency.

The PC motherboard included a second, empty socket, described by IBM simply as an "auxiliary processor socket", although the most obvious use was the addition of an Intel 8087 math coprocessor, which improved floating-point math performance.

PC mainboards were manufactured with the first memory bank of initially Mostek 4116-compatible, or later 4164-compatible DIP DRAMs soldered to the board, for a minimum configuration of first just 16 KB, or later 64 KB of RAM. Memory upgrades were provided by IBM and third parties both for socketed installation in three further onboard banks, and as ISA expansion cards. The early 16 KB mainboards could be upgraded to a maximum of 64 KB onboard, and the more common 64 KB revision to a maximum of 256 KB on the motherboard. RAM cards could upgrade either variant further, for a total of 640 KB conventional memory, and possibly several megabytes of expanded memory beyond that, though on PC/XT-class machines, the latter was a very expensive third-party hardware option only available later in the IBM 5150's lifecycle and only usable with dedicated software support (i.e. only accessible via a RAM window in the Upper Memory Area ); this was relatively rarely equipped and utilized on the original IBM PC, much less fully so, thus the machine's maximum RAM configuration as commonly understood was 640 KB.

ROM BIOS
The BIOS is the firmware of the IBM PC, occupying one 8 KB chip on the motherboard. It provides bootstrap code and a library of common functions that all software can use for many purposes, such as video output, keyboard input, disk access, interrupt handling, testing memory, and other functions. IBM shipped three versions of the BIOS throughout the PC's lifespan.

Display
While most home computers had built-in video output hardware, IBM took the unusual approach of offering two different graphics options, the MDA and CGA cards. The former provided high-resolution monochrome text, but could not display anything except text, while the latter provided medium- and low-resolution color graphics and text.

CGA used the same scan rate as NTSC television, allowing it to provide a composite video output which could be used with any compatible television or composite monitor, as well as a direct-drive TTL output suitable for use with any RGBI monitor using an NTSC scan rate. IBM also sold the 5153 color monitor for this purpose, but it was not available at release and was not released until March 1983.

MDA scanned at a higher frequency and required a proprietary monitor, the IBM 5151. The card also included a built-in printer port.

Both cards could also be installed simultaneously for mixed graphics and text applications. For instance, AutoCAD, Lotus 1-2-3 and other software allowed use of a CGA Monitor for graphics and a separate monochrome monitor for text menus. Third parties went on to provide an enormous variety of aftermarket graphics adapters, such as the Hercules Graphics Card.

The software and hardware of the PC, at release, was designed around a single 8-bit adaptation of the ASCII character set, now known as code page 437.

Storage
The two bays in the front of the machine could be populated with one or two 5.25″ floppy disk drives, storing 160 KB per disk side for a total of 320 KB of storage on one disk. The floppy drives require a controller card inserted in an expansion slot, and connect with a single ribbon cable with two edge connectors. The IBM floppy controller card provides an external 37-pin D-sub connector for attachment of an external disk drive, although IBM did not offer one for purchase until 1986.

As was common for home computers of the era, the IBM PC offered a port for connecting a cassette data recorder. Unlike the typical home computer however, this was never a major avenue for software distribution, probably because very few PCs were sold without floppy drives. The port was removed on the very next PC model, the XT.

At release, IBM did not offer any hard disk drive option and adding one was difficult - the PC's stock power supply had inadequate power to run a hard drive, the motherboard did not support BIOS expansion ROMs which was needed to support a hard drive controller, and both PC DOS and the BIOS had no support for hard disks. After the XT was released, IBM altered the design of the 5150 to add most of these capabilities, except for the upgraded power supply. At this point adding a hard drive was possible, but required the purchase of the IBM 5161 Expansion Unit, which contained a dedicated power supply and included a hard drive.

Although official hard drive support did not exist, the third party market did provide early hard drives that connected to the floppy disk controller, but required a patched version of PC DOS to support the larger disk sizes.

Human interface
The only option for human interface provided in the base PC was the built-in keyboard port, meant to connect to the included Model F keyboard. The Model F was initially developed for the IBM Datamaster, and was substantially better than the keyboards provided with virtually all home computers on the market at that time in many regards - number of keys, reliability and ergonomics. While some home computers of the time utilized chiclet keyboards or inexpensive mechanical designs, the IBM keyboard provided good ergonomics, reliable and positive tactile key mechanisms and flip-up feet to adjust its angle. Public reception of the keyboard was extremely positive, with some sources describing it as a major selling point of the PC and even as "the best keyboard available on any microcomputer." At release, IBM provided a Game Control Adapter which offered a 15-pin port intended for the connection of up to two joysticks, each having two analog axes and two buttons. (The early PCs predated the advent of the "Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointer" concept and so did not have a mouse.)

Communications
Connectivity to other computers and peripherals was initially provided through serial and parallel ports.

IBM provided a serial card based on an 8250 UART. The BIOS supports up to two serial ports.

IBM provided two different options for connecting Centronics-compatible parallel printers. One was the IBM Printer Adapter, and the other was integrated into the MDA as the IBM Monochrome Display and Printer Adapter.

Expansion
The expansion capability of the IBM PC was very significant to its success in the market. Some publications highlighted IBM's uncharacteristic decision to publish complete, thorough specifications of the system bus and memory map immediately on release, with the intention of fostering a market of compatible third-party hardware and software.

The motherboard includes five 62-pin card edge connectors which are connected to the CPU's I/O lines. IBM referred to these as "I/O slots", but after the expansion of the PC clone industry they became retroactively known as the ISA bus. At the back of the machine is a metal panel, integrated into the steel chassis of the system unit, with a series of vertical slots lined up with each card slot.

Most expansion cards have a matching metal bracket which slots into one of these openings, serving two purposes. First, a screw inserted through a tab on the bracket into the chassis fastens the card securely in place, preventing the card from wiggling out of place. Second, any ports the card provides for external attachment are bolted to the bracket, keeping them secured in place as well.

The PC expansion slots can accept an enormous variety of expansion hardware, adding capabilities such as:

 * Graphics
 * Sound
 * Mouse support
 * Expanded memory
 * Additional serial or parallel ports
 * Networking
 * Connection to proprietary industrial or scientific equipment

The market reacted as IBM had intended, and within a year or two of the PC's release the available options for expansion hardware were immense.

5161 Expansion Unit
The expandability of the PC was important, but had significant limitations.

One major limitation was the inability to install a hard drive, as described above. Another was that there were only five expansion slots, which tended to get filled up by essential hardware - a PC with a graphics card, memory expansion, parallel card and serial card was left with only one open slot, for instance.

IBM rectified these problems in the later XT, which included more slots and support for an internal hard drive, but at the same time released the 5161 Expansion Unit, which could be used with either the XT or the original PC. The 5161 connected to the PC system unit using a cable and a card plugged into an expansion slot, and provided a second system chassis with more expansion slots and a hard drive.

Software

IBM initially announced intent to support multiple operating systems: CP/M-86, UCSD p-System, and an in-house product called IBM PC DOS, based on 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products and provided by Microsoft. In practice, IBM's expectation and intent was for the market to primarily use PC DOS. CP/M-86 was not available for six months after the PC's release and received extremely few orders once it was, and p-System was also not available at release. PC DOS rapidly established itself as the standard OS for the PC and remained the standard for over a decade, with a variant being sold by Microsoft themselves as MS-DOS.

The PC included BASIC in ROM (four 8 KB chips), a common feature of 1980s home computers. Its ROM BASIC supported the cassette tape interface, but PC DOS did not, limiting use of that interface to BASIC only.

PC DOS version 1.00 supported only 160 KB SSDD floppies, but version 1.1, which was released nine months after the PC's introduction, supported 160 KB SSDD and 320 KB DSDD floppies. Support for the slightly larger nine sector per track 180 KB and 360 KB formats was added in March 1983.

Third-party software support grew extremely quickly, and within a year the PC platform was supplied with a vast array of titles for any conceivable purpose.

Reception
Reception of the IBM PC was extremely positive. Even before its release reviewers were impressed by the advertised specifications of the machine, and upon its release reviews praised virtually every aspect of its design both in comparison to contemporary machines and with regards to new and unexpected features.

Praise was directed at the build quality of the PC, in particular its keyboard, IBM's decision to use open specifications to encourage third party software and hardware development, their speed at delivering documentation and the quality therein, the quality of the video display, and the use of commodity components from established suppliers in the electronics industry. The price was considered extremely competitive compared to the value per dollar of competing machines.

Two years after its release, Byte magazine retrospectively concluded that the PC had succeeded both because of its features – an 80-column screen, open architecture, and high-quality keyboard – and the failure of other computer manufacturers to achieve these features first:

"In retrospect, it seems IBM stepped into a void that remained, paradoxically, at the center of a crowded market."

Creative Computing that year named the PC the best desktop computer between $2,000 and $4,000, praising its vast hardware and software selection, manufacturer support, and resale value.

Many IBM PCs remained in service long after their technology became largely obsolete. For instance, as of June 2006 (23–25 years after release) IBM PC and XT models were still in use at the majority of U.S. National Weather Service upper-air observing sites, processing data returned from radiosondes attached to weather balloons.

Due to its status as the first entry in the extremely influential PC industry, the original IBM PC remains valuable as a collector's item. , the system had a market value of $50–$500.

Model line
IBM sold a number of computers under the "Personal Computer" or "PC" name throughout the 80s. The name was not used for several years before being reused for the IBM PC Series in the 90s and early 2000s.

As with all PC-derived systems, all IBM PC models are nominally software-compatible, although some timing-sensitive software will not run correctly on models with faster CPUs.

Clones
Because the IBM PC was based on commodity hardware rather than unique IBM components, and because its operation was extensively documented by IBM, creating machines that were fully compatible with the PC offered few challenges other than the creation of a compatible BIOS ROM.

Simple duplication of the IBM PC BIOS was a direct violation of copyright law, but soon into the PC's life the BIOS was reverse-engineered by companies like Compaq, Phoenix Software Associates, American Megatrends and Award, who either built their own computers that could run the same software and use the same expansion hardware as the PC, or sold their BIOS code to other manufacturers who wished to build their own machines.

These machines became known as IBM compatibles or "clones", and software was widely marketed as compatible with "IBM PC or 100% compatible". Shortly thereafter, clone manufacturers began to make improvements and extensions to the hardware, such as by using faster processors like the NEC V20, which executed the same software as the 8088 at a higher speed up to 10 MHz.

The clone market eventually became so large that it lost its associations with the original PC and became a set of de facto standards established by various hardware manufacturers.

title: IBM Personal Computer


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Counties of Ireland

The counties of Ireland (Irish: Contaetha na hÉireann) are historic administrative divisions of the island. They began as Norman structures, and as the powers exercised by the Cambro-Norman barons and the Old English nobility waned over time, new offices of political control came to be established at a county level. The number of counties varied depending on the time period, however thirty-two is the traditionally accepted and used number.

Upon the partition of Ireland in 1921, six of the traditional counties became part of Northern Ireland. In Northern Ireland, counties ceased to be used for local government in 1973; districts are instead used. In the Republic of Ireland, some counties have been split resulting in the creation of new counties: there are currently 26 counties, 3 cities and 2 cities and counties that demarcate areas of local government in the Republic.

Terminology
The word "county" has come to be used in different senses for different purposes. In common usage, it can mean the 32 counties that existed prior to 1838 – the so-called traditional counties, 26 of which are in the Republic of Ireland. However, the Local Government Acts define counties to include separate counties within the traditional county of Dublin.

In Ireland, the word county nearly always precedes the county name; thus "County Roscommon" in Ireland as opposed to "Roscommon County" in Michigan, United States. The former "King's County" and "Queen's County" were exceptions; however, these are now County Offaly and County Laois, respectively. The abbreviation Co. is used, as in "Co. Roscommon". The counties in Dublin created in 1994 often drop the word county entirely, or use it after the name; thus, for example, internet search engines show many more uses (on Irish sites) of "Fingal" than of either "County Fingal" or "Fingal County". Although official guidance does not use the term county as part of its name, the local council uses all three forms. In informal use, the word county is often dropped except where necessary to distinguish between county and town or city; thus "Offaly" rather than "County Offaly", but "County Antrim" to distinguish it from Antrim town. The synonym shire is not used for Irish counties, although the Marquessate of Downshire was named in 1789 after County Down.

Parts of some towns and cities were exempt from the jurisdiction of the counties that surrounded them. These towns and cities had the status of a county corporate, often granted by royal charter, which had all the judicial, administrative and revenue-raising powers of the regular counties.

Pre-Norman divisions of Ireland
The political geography of Ireland can be traced with some accuracy from the 6th century. At that time Ireland was divided into a patchwork of petty kingdoms with a fluid political hierarchy which, in general, had three traditional grades of king. The lowest level of political control existed at the level of the túath (pl. túatha). A túath was an autonomous group of people of independent political jurisdiction under a rí túaithe, that is, a local petty king. About 150 such units of government existed. Each rí túaithe was in turn subject to a regional or "over-king" (ruiri). There may have been as many as 20 genuine ruiri in Ireland at any time.

A "king of over-kings" (rí ruirech) was often a provincial (rí cóicid) or semi-provincial king to whom several ruiri were subordinate. No more than six genuine rí ruirech were ever contemporary. Usually, only five such "king of over-kings" existed contemporaneously and so are described in the Irish annals as fifths (cúigí). The areas under the control of these kings were: Ulster (Ulaidh), Leinster (Laighin), Connacht (Connachta), Munster (An Mhumhan) and Mide (An Mhídhe). Later record-makers dubbed them provinces, in imitation of Roman provinces. In the Norman period, the historic fifths of Leinster and Meath gradually merged, mainly due to the impact of the Pale, which straddled both, thereby forming the present-day province of Leinster.

The use of provinces as divisions of political power was supplanted by the system of counties after the Norman invasion. In modern times clusters of counties have been attributed to certain provinces but these clusters have no legal status. They are today seen mainly in a sporting context, as Ireland's four professional rugby teams play under the names of the provinces, and the Gaelic Athletic Association has separate Provincial councils and Provincial championships.

Lordships
With the arrival of Cambro-Norman knights in 1169, the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland commenced. This was followed in 1172 by the invasion of King Henry II of England, commencing English royal involvement.

After his intervention in Ireland, Henry II effectively divided the English colony into liberties also known as lordships. These were effectively palatine counties and differed from ordinary counties in that they were disjoined from the crown and that whoever they were granted to essentially had the same authority as the king and that the king's writ had no effect except a writ of error. This covered all land within the county that was not church land. The reason for the creation of such powerful entities in Ireland was due to the lack of authority the English crown had there. The same process occurred after the Norman conquest of England where despite there being a strong central government, county palatines were needed in border areas with Wales and Scotland. In Ireland this meant that the land was divided and granted to Richard de Clare and his followers who became lords (and sometimes called earls), with the only land which the English crown had any direct control over being the sea-coast towns and territories immediately adjacent.

Of Henry II's grants, at least three of them—Leinster to Richard de Clare; Meath to Walter de Lacy; Ulster to John de Courcy—were equivalent to palatine counties in their bestowing of royal jurisdiction to the grantees. Other grants include the liberties of Connaught and Tipperary.

Division of lordships
These initial lordships were later subdivided into smaller "liberties", which appear to have enjoyed the same privileges as their predecessors. The division of Leinster and Munster into smaller counties is commonly attributed to King John, mostly due to a lack of prior documentary evidence, which has been destroyed. However, they may have had an earlier origin. These counties were: in Leinster: Carlow (also known as Catherlogh), Dublin, Kildare, Kilkenny, Louth (also known as Uriel), Meath, Wexford, Waterford; in Munster: Cork, Limerick, Kerry and Tipperary. It is thought that these counties did not have the administrative purpose later attached to them until late in the reign of King John and that no new counties were created until the Tudor dynasty.

The most important office in those that were palatine was that of seneschal. In those liberties that came under Crown control this office was held by a sheriff. The sovereign could and did appoint sheriffs in palatines; however, their power was confined to the church lands, and they became known as sheriffs of a County of the Cross, of which there seem to have been as many in Ireland as there were counties palatine.

The exact boundaries of the liberties and shrievalties appear to have been in constant flux throughout the Plantagenet period, seemingly in line with the extent of English control. For example, in 1297 it is recorded that Kildare had extended to include the lands that now comprise the modern-day counties of Offaly, Laois (Leix) and Wicklow (Arklow). Some attempts had also been made to extend the county system to Ulster.

However the Bruce Invasion of Ireland in 1315 resulted in the collapse of effective English rule in Ireland, with the land controlled by the crown continually shrinking to encompass Dublin, and parts of Meath, Louth and Kildare. Throughout the rest of Ireland, English rule was upheld by the earls of Desmond, Ormond, and Kildare (all created in the 14th-century), with the extension of the county system all but impossible. During the reign of Edward III (1327–77) all franchises, grants and liberties had been temporarily revoked with power passed to the king's sheriffs over the seneschals. This may have been due to the disorganisation caused by the Bruce invasion as well as the renouncing of the Connaught Burkes of their allegiance to the crown.

The Earls of Ulster divided their territory up into counties; however, these are not considered part of the Crown's shiring of Ireland. In 1333, the Earldom of Ulster is recorded as consisting of seven counties: Antrim, Blathewyc, Cragferus, Coulrath, del Art, Dun (also known as Ladcathel), and Twescard.

Passage to the Crown
Of the original lordships or palatine counties:
 * Leinster had passed from Richard de Clare to his daughter, Isabel de Clare, who had married William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke (second creation of title). This marriage was confirmed by King John, with Isabel's lands given to William as consort. The liberty was afterwards divided into five—Carlow, Kildare, Kilkenny, Leix and Wexford—one for each of Marshal's co-heiresses.
 * Meath was divided between the granddaughters of Walter de Lacy: Maud and Margery. Maud's half became the liberty of Trim, and she married Geoffrey de Geneville. Margery's half retained the name Meath, and she married John de Verdon. After the marriage of Maud's daughter Joan to Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March, Trim later passed via their descendants to the English Crown. Meath, which had passed to the Talbots, was resumed by Henry VIII under the Statute of Absentees.
 * Ulster was regranted to the de Lacys from John de Courcy, whilst Connaught, which had been granted to William de Burgh, was at some point divided into the liberties of Connaught and Roscommon. William's grandson Walter de Burgh was in 1264 also made lord of Ulster, bringing both Connaught and Ulster under the same lord. In 1352 Elizabeth de Burgh, 4th Countess of Ulster married Lionel of Antwerp, a son of king Edward III. Their daughter Philippa married Edmund Mortimer, 3rd Earl of March. Upon the death of Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March in 1425, both lordships were inherited by Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York and thus passed to the Crown.
 * Tipperary was resumed by King James I, however under Charles II in 1662 was reconstituted for James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde.

With the passing of liberties to the Crown, the number of Counties of the Cross declined, and only one, Tipperary, survived into the Stuart era; the others had ceased to exist by the reign of Henry VIII.

Tudor era
It was not until the Tudors, specifically the reign of Henry VIII (1509–47), that crown control started to once again extend throughout Ireland. Having declared himself King of Ireland in 1541, Henry VIII went about converting Irish chiefs into feudal subjects of the crown with land divided into districts, which were eventually amalgamated into the modern counties. County boundaries were still ill-defined; however, in 1543 Meath was split into Meath and Westmeath. Around 1545, the Byrnes and O'Tooles, both native septs who had constantly been a pain for the English administration of the Pale, petitioned the Lord Deputy of Ireland to turn their district into its own county, Wicklow. However, this was ignored.

During the reigns of the last two Tudor monarchs, Mary I (1553–58) and Elizabeth I (1558–1603), the majority of the work for the foundation of the modern counties was carried out under the auspices of three Lord Deputies: Thomas Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex, Sir Henry Sydney, and Sir John Perrot.

Mary's reign saw the first addition of actual new counties since the reign of King John. Radclyffe had conquered the districts of Glenmaliry, Irry, Leix, Offaly, and Slewmargy from the O'Moores and O'Connors, and in 1556 a statute decreed that Offaly and part of Glenmaliry would be made into the county of King's County, whilst the rest of Glenmarliry along with Irry, Leix and Slewmargy was formed into Queen's County. Radclyffe brought forth legislation to shire all land as yet unshired throughout Ireland and sought to divide the island into six parts—Connaught, Leinster, Meath, Nether Munster, Ulster, and Upper Munster. However, his administrative reign in Ireland was cut short, and it was not until the reign of Mary's successor, Elizabeth, that this legislation was re-adopted. Under Elizabeth, Radclyffe was brought back to implement it.

Sydney during his three tenures as Lord Deputy created two presidencies to administer Connaught and Munster. He shired Connaught into the counties of Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, and Sligo. In 1565 the territory of the O'Rourkes within Roscommon was made into the county of Leitrim. In an attempt to reduce the importance of the province of Munster, Sydney, using the River Shannon as a natural boundary took the former kingdom of Thomond (North Munster) and made it into the county of Clare as part of the presidency of Connaught in 1569. In 1569 the Irish Parliament passed "An Act for turning of Countries that be not yet Shire Grounds into Shire Grounds". A commission headed by Perrot and others in 1571 declared that the territory of Desmond in Munster was to be made a county of itself, and it had its own sheriff appointed, however in 1606 it was merged with the county of Kerry. In 1575 Sydney made an expedition to Ulster to plan its shiring. However, nothing came to bear.

In 1578 the go-ahead was given for turning the districts of the Byrnes and O'Tooles into the county of Wicklow. However, with the outbreak of war in Munster and then Ulster, they resumed their independence. Sydney also sought to split Wexford into two smaller counties, the northern half of which was to be called Ferns, but the matter was dropped as it was considered impossible to properly administer. The territory of the O'Farrells of Annaly, however, which was in Westmeath, in 1583 was formed into the county of Longford and transferred to Connaught. The Desmond rebellion (1579–83) that was taking place in Munster stopped Sydney's work and by the time it had been defeated Sir John Perrot was now Lord Deputy, being appointed in 1584.

Perrot would be most remembered for shiring the only province of Ireland that remained effectively outside of English control, that of Ulster. Prior to his tenancy the only proper county in Ulster was Louth, which had been part of the Pale. There were two other long recognised entities north of Louth—Antrim and Down—that had at one time been "counties" of the Earldom of Ulster and were regarded as apart from the unreformed parts of the province. The date Antrim and Down became constituted is unknown. Perrot was recalled in 1588 and the shiring of Ulster would for two decades basically exist on paper as the territory affected remained firmly outside of English control until the defeat of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone in the Nine Years' War. These counties were: Armagh, Cavan, Coleraine, Donegal, Fermanagh, Monaghan, and Tyrone. Cavan was formed from the territory of the O'Reilly's of East Breifne in 1584 and had been transferred from Connaught to Ulster. After O'Neill and his allies fled Ireland in 1607 in the Flight of the Earls, their lands became escheated to the Crown and the county divisions designed by Perrot were used as the basis for the grants of the subsequent Plantation of Ulster effected by King James I, which officially started in 1609.

Around 1600 near the end of Elizabeth's reign, Clare was made an entirely distinct presidency of its own under the Earls of Thomond and would not return to being part of Munster until after the Restoration in 1660.

It was not until the subjugation of the Byrnes and O'Tooles by Lord Deputy Sir Arthur Chichester that in 1606 Wicklow was finally shired. This county was one of the last to be created, yet was the closest to the centre of English power in Ireland.

County Londonderry was incorporated in 1613 by the merger of County Coleraine with the barony of Loughinsholin (in County Tyrone), the North West Liberties of Londonderry (in County Donegal), and the North East Liberties of Coleraine (in County Antrim).

Demarcation of counties and Tipperary
Throughout the Elizabethan era and the reign of her successor James I, the exact boundaries of the provinces and the counties they consisted of remained uncertain. In 1598 Meath is considered a province in Hayne's Description of Ireland, and included the counties of Cavan, East Meath, Longford, and Westmeath. This contrasts to George Carew's 1602 survey where there were only four provinces with Longford part of Connaught and Cavan not mentioned at all with only three counties mentioned for Ulster. During Perrot's tenure as Lord President of Munster before he became Lord Deputy, Munster contained as many as eight counties rather than the six it later consisted of. These eight counties were: the five English counties of Cork, Limerick, Kerry, Tipperary, and Waterford; and the three Irish counties of Desmond, Ormond, and Thomond.

Perrot's divisions in Ulster were for the main confirmed by a series of inquisitions between 1606 and 1610 that settled the demarcation of the counties of Connaught and Ulster. John Speed's Description of the Kingdom of Ireland in 1610 showed that there was still a vagueness over what counties constituted the provinces, however, Meath was no longer reckoned a province. By 1616 when the Attorney General for Ireland Sir John Davies departed Ireland, almost all counties had been delimited. The only exception was the county of Tipperary, which still belonged to the palatinate of Ormond.

Tipperary would remain an anomaly being in effect two counties, one palatine, the other of the Cross until 1715 during the reign of King George I when an act abolished the "royalties and liberties of the County of Tipperary" and "that whatsoever hath been denominated or called Tipperary or Cross Tipperary, shall henceforth be and remain one county forever, under the name of the County of Tipperary." Between 1838 and 2014, County Tipperary was divided into two ridings/counties, North Tipperary and South Tipperary.

Sub-divisions of counties
To correspond with the subdivisions of the English shires into honours or baronies, Irish counties were granted out to the Anglo-Norman noblemen in cantreds, later known as baronies, which in turn were subdivided, as in England, into parishes. Parishes were composed of townlands. However, in many cases, these divisions correspond to earlier, pre-Norman, divisions. While there are 331 baronies in Ireland, and more than a thousand civil parishes, there are around sixty thousand townlands that range in size from one to several thousand hectares. Townlands were often traditionally divided into smaller units called quarters, but these subdivisions are not legally defined.

Counties corporate
The following towns/cities had charters specifically granting them the status of a county corporate: The only entirely new counties created in 1898 were the county boroughs of Londonderry and Belfast. Carrickfergus, Drogheda and Kilkenny were abolished; Galway was also abolished, but recreated in 1986.
 * County of the Town of Carrickfergus (by 1325)
 * County of the City of Cork (1608)
 * County of the Town of Drogheda (1412)
 * County of the City of Dublin (1548)
 * County of the Town of Galway (1610)
 * County of the City of Kilkenny (1610)
 * County of the City of Limerick (1609)
 * County of the City of Waterford (1574)

Exceptions to the county system of control
Regional presidencies of Connacht and Munster remained in existence until 1672, with special powers over their subsidiary counties. Tipperary remained a county palatine until the passing of the County Palatine of Tipperary Act 1715, with different officials and procedures from other counties. At the same time, Dublin, until the 19th century, had ecclesiastical liberties with rules outside those applying to the rest of Dublin city and county. Exclaves of the county of Dublin existed in counties Kildare and Wicklow. At least eight other enclaves of one county inside another, or between two others, existed. The various enclaves and exclaves were merged into neighbouring and surrounding counties, primarily in the mid-19th century under a series of Orders in Council.

Evolution of functions
The Church of Ireland exercised functions at the level of a civil parish that would later be exercised by county authorities. Vestigial feudal power structures of major old estates remained well into the 18th century. Urban corporations operated individual royal charters. Management of counties came to be exercised by grand juries. Members of grand juries were the local payers of rates who historically held judicial functions, taking maintenance roles in regard to roads and bridges, and the collection of "county cess" taxes. They were usually composed of wealthy "country gentlemen" (i.e. landowners, farmers and merchants):"A country gentleman as a member of a Grand Jury...levied the local taxes, appointed the nephews of his old friends to collect them, and spent them when they were gathered in. He controlled the boards of guardians and appointed the dispensary doctors, regulated the diet of paupers, inflicted fines and administered the law at petty sessions." The counties were initially used for judicial purposes, but began to take on some governmental functions in the 17th century, notably with grand juries.

19th and 20th centuries
In 1836, the use of counties as local government units was further developed, with grand-jury powers extended under the Grand Jury (Ireland) Act 1836. The traditional county of Tipperary was split into two judicial counties (or ridings) following the establishment of assize courts in 1838. Also in that year, local poor law boards, with a mix of magistrates and elected "guardians" took over the health and social welfare functions of the grand juries.

Sixty years later, a more radical reorganisation of local government took place with the passage of the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898. This Act established a county council for each of the thirty-three Irish administrative counties. Elected county councils took over the powers of the grand juries. The boundaries of the traditional counties changed on a number of occasions. The 1898 Act changed the boundaries of Counties Galway, Clare, Mayo, Roscommon, Sligo, Waterford, Kilkenny, Meath and Louth, and others. County Tipperary was divided into two regions: North Riding and South Riding. Areas of the cities of Belfast, Cork, Dublin, Limerick, Derry and Waterford were carved from their surrounding counties to become county boroughs in their own right and given powers equivalent to those of administrative counties.

Under the Government of Ireland Act 1920, the island was partitioned between Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland. For the purposes of the Act, "... Northern Ireland shall consist of the parliamentary counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone, and the parliamentary boroughs of Belfast and Londonderry, and Southern Ireland shall consist of so much of Ireland as is not comprised within the said parliamentary counties and boroughs."

The county and county borough borders were thus used to determine the line of partition. Southern Ireland shortly afterwards became the Irish Free State. This partition was entrenched in the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which was ratified in 1922, by which the Irish Free State left the United Kingdom with Northern Ireland making the decision to not separate two days later.

Historic and traditional counties
Areas that were shired by 1607 and continued as counties until the local government reforms of 1836, 1898 and 2001 are sometimes referred to as "traditional" or "historic" counties. These were distinct from the counties corporate that existed in some of the larger towns and cities, although linked to the county at large for other purposes. From 1898 to 2001, areas with county councils were known as administrative counties, while the counties corporate were designated as county boroughs. From 2001, local government areas were divided between counties and cities. From 2014, they were divided into counties, cities, and cities and counties.

In the Republic of Ireland
In the Republic of Ireland, the traditional counties are, in general, the basis for local government, planning and community development purposes and are still generally respected for other purposes. They are governed by county councils. Administrative borders have been altered to allocate various towns exclusively into one county having been originally split between two counties.

At the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, there were 27 administrative counties (with County Tipperary divided into the administrative counties of North Tipperary and South Tipperary) and 4 county boroughs, Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford.

Rural districts were abolished by the Local Government Act 1925 and the Local Government (Dublin) Act 1930 amidst widespread allegations of corruption.

Under the Local Government Provisional Order Confirmation Act 1976, part of the urban area of Drogheda, which lay in County Meath, was transferred to County Louth on 1 January 1977. This resulted in the land area of County Louth increasing slightly at the expense of County Meath. The possibility of a similar action with regard to Waterford City has been raised in recent years, though opposition from Kilkenny has been strong.

In 1985, Galway became a county borough.

County Dublin was abolished as an administrative county in 1994 and divided into three administrative counties: Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, Fingal, and South Dublin.

Under the Local Government Act 2001, the county boroughs of Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford were re-styled as cities, with the same status in law as counties. The term administrative county was replaced with the term "county".

The cities of Limerick and Waterford were merged with their respective counties by the Local Government Reform Act 2014, to form new cities and counties. The same Act also abolished North Tipperary and South Tipperary and re-established County Tipperary as an administrative unit.

There are now 31 local government areas: 26 counties, three cities, and two cities and counties.

Since 2014, local authorities send representatives to Regional Assemblies overseeing three regions for the purposes of European Structural and Investment Funds: Southern Region, the Eastern and Midland Region, and the Northern and Western Region. From 1994 to 2014, there were eight Regional Authorities, dissolved under the Local Government Reform Act 2014.

As placenames, there is a distinction between the traditional counties, listed as "counties", and those created as local government areas, listed as "administrative counties".

Education
In 2013 Education and Training Boards (ETBs) were formed throughout the Republic of Ireland, replacing the system of Vocational Education Committees (VECs) created in 1930. Originally, VECs were formed for each administrative county and county borough, and also in a number of larger towns, and were legally sub-committees of the relevant authorities. In 1997 the majority of town VECs were absorbed by the surrounding county authorities. The 33 VEC areas were reduced to 16 ETB areas, with each consisting of one or more local government county or city areas.

The Institute of technology system was organised by committee areas or "functional areas"; these areas retain their legal basis but are not as important as originally envisioned as the institutes are now more national in character. The functional areas are only of significance today when selecting governing councils; similarly, Dublin Institute of Technology was originally a group of several colleges within the aegis of the City of Dublin VEC.

Elections
Where possible, Dáil constituencies follow county boundaries. Under the Electoral Act 1997, as amended, a Constituency Commission is established following the publication of preliminary census figures every five years. The commission is charged with defining constituency boundaries, and the 1997 Act provides that "the breaching of county boundaries shall be avoided as far as practicable". This provision does not apply to the boundaries between cities and counties, or between the three counties in the Dublin area.

This system usually results in more populated counties having several constituencies: Dublin, including Dublin city, is subdivided into twelve constituencies, Cork into five. On the other hand, smaller counties such as Carlow and Kilkenny or Laois and Offaly may be paired to form constituencies. Leitrim, Ireland's least populated county, was divided between the constituencies of Sligo–North Leitrim and Roscommon–South Leitrim from 2007 to 2016.

Each county, city, and city and county is divided into local electoral areas for the election of councillors. The boundaries of the areas and the number of councillors assigned are fixed from time to time by order of the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, following a report by the Local Government Commission, and based on population changes recorded in the census.

In Northern Ireland
In Northern Ireland, a major reorganisation of local government in 1973 replaced the six traditional counties and two county boroughs (Belfast and Derry) with 26 single-tier districts for local government purposes. In 2015, as a result of a reform process that started in 2005, these districts were merged to form 11 new single-tier "super districts".

The six traditional counties remain in use for some purposes, including the three-letter coding of vehicle number plates, the Royal Mail Postcode Address File (which records counties in all addresses although they are no longer required for postcoded mail) and Lord Lieutenancies (for which the former county boroughs are also used). There are no longer official 'county towns'. However, the counties are still very widely acknowledged, for example as administrative divisions for sporting and cultural organisations.

Other uses
The administrative division of the island along the lines of the traditional 32 counties was also adopted by non-governmental and cultural organisations. In particular, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) continues to organise its activities on the basis of its own system of counties that, throughout the island, correspond almost exactly to the 32 traditional counties in use at the time of the foundation of that organisation in 1884. The GAA also uses the term "county" for some of its organisational units in Britain and further afield. Legal adjustments to county bounds since 1884 have not been reflected in GAA county boards (e.g. Ballaghaderreen GAA which is located in County Roscommon but affiliated to Mayo GAA county board).

List of counties
The 35 divisions listed below include the traditional counties of Ireland as well as three created in Dublin in 1994. Twenty-four counties still delimit the remit of local government areas in the Republic of Ireland (in some cases with slightly redrawn boundaries). County Dublin, which was abolished as a distinct administrative entity in 1994, is included, as are the three new administrative counties which took over the functions of the former County Dublin. In Northern Ireland, the counties listed no longer serve this purpose. The Irish-language names of counties in the Republic of Ireland are prescribed by ministerial order, which in the case of three newer counties, omits the word contae (county). Irish names form the basis for all English-language county names except Waterford, Wexford, and Wicklow, which are of Norse origin.

The "Region" column of the table below, except for the six Northern Ireland counties, indicates Regions as defined under the Local Government Act 1991. These are NUTS 2 statistical regions of Ireland. "County town" is the current or former administrative capital of the county.

The cities of Cork, Dublin, and Galway, which are separate local government areas with the same legal status as counties, are not shown separately. Also omitted are the former county boroughs of Londonderry and Belfast which in Northern Ireland had the same legal status as the six counties until the reorganisation of local government in 1973.

 * Notes:

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Counties of Ireland


text:
Information Sciences Institute

The USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI) is a component of the University of Southern California (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering, and specializes in research and development in information processing, computing, and communications technologies. It is located in Marina del Rey, California.

ISI actively participated in the information revolution, and it played a leading role in developing and managing the early Internet and its predecessor ARPAnet. The Institute conducts basic and applied research supported by more than 20 U.S. government agencies involved in defense, science, health, homeland security, energy and other areas. Annual funding is about $100 million.

ISI employs about 400 research scientists, research programmers, graduate students and administrative staff at its Marina del Rey, California headquarters, in Arlington, Virginia, and in Boston, Massachusetts. About half of the research staff hold PhD degrees, and about 40 are research faculty who teach at USC and advise graduate students. Several senior researchers are tenured USC faculty in the Viterbi School.

Research and sponsors
ISI research spans artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, grid computing, cloud computing, quantum computing, microelectronics, supercomputing, nano-satellites and many other areas. AI expertise includes natural language processing, in which ISI has an international reputation,  reconfigurable robotics, information integration, motion analysis  and social media analysis. Hardware/software expertise includes cyber-physical system security, data mining, reconfigurable computing and cloud computing. In networking, ISI explores Internet resilience, Internet traffic analysis and photonics, among other areas. Researchers also work in scientific data management, wireless technologies, biomimetics and electrical smart grid, in which ISI is advising the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power on a major demonstration project. Another current initiative involves big data brain imaging jointly with the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

Federal agency sponsors include the Air Force Research Laboratory, DARPA, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and other scientific, technical, and defense-related agencies.

Corporate partners include Chevron Corporation in the Center for Interactive Smart Oilfield Technologies (CiSoft), Lockheed Martin in the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center, and Sparta Inc., a subsidiary of Parsons Corporation in the DETER Project, a cybersecurity research initiative and international testbed. ISI also has partnered with businesses including IBM, Samsung Electronics, Raytheon, GlobalFoundries, Northrop Grumman and Carl Zeiss AG, and currently is working with Micron Technology, Inc., Altera Corporation and Fujitsu Ltd.

ISI also operates MOSIS, a multi-project electronic circuit wafer service that has prototyped more than 60,000 chips since 1981. MOSIS provides design tools and pools circuit designs to produce specialty and low-volume chips for corporations, universities and other research entities worldwide. The Institute also has given rise to several startup and spinoff companies in grid software, geospatial information fusion, machine translation, data integration and other technologies.

History
ISI was founded by Keith Uncapher, who headed the computer research group at RAND Corporation in the 1960s and early 1970s. Uncapher decided to leave RAND after his group's funding was cut in 1971. He approached the University of California, Los Angeles about creating an off-campus technology institute, but was told that a decision would take 15 months. He then presented the concept to USC, which approved the proposal in five days. ISI was launched with three employees in 1972. Its first proposal was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 30 days for $6 million.

ISI became one of the earliest nodes on ARPANET, the predecessor to the Internet, and in 1977 figured prominently in a demonstration of its international viability. ISI also helped refine the TCP/IP communications protocols fundamental to Net operations, and researcher Paul Mockapetris developed the now-familiar Domain Name System characterized by .com, .org, .net, .gov, and .edu on which the Net still operates. (The names .com, .org et al. were invented at SRI International, an ongoing collaborator.) Steve Crocker originated the Request for Comments (RFC) series, the written record of the network's technical structure and operation that both documented and shaped the emerging Internet. Another ISI researcher, Danny Cohen, became first to implement packet voice and packet video over ARPANET, demonstrating the viability of packet switching for real-time applications.

Jonathan Postel collaborated in development of TCP/IP, DNS and the SMTP protocol that supports email. He also edited the RFC for nearly three decades until his sudden death in 1998, when ISI colleagues assumed responsibility. The Institute retained that role until 2009. Postel simultaneously directed the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and its predecessor, which assign Internet addresses. IANA was administered from ISI until a nonprofit organization, ICANN, was created for that purpose in 1998.

Other achievements
Some of the first Net security applications, and one of the world's first portable computers, also originated at ISI.

ISI researchers also created or co-created the:
 * GLOBUS grid computing standard
 * LOOM knowledge representation language and environment, or LOOM (ontology)
 * MONARCH supercomputer-on-a-chip
 * Soar (cognitive architecture) for developing intelligent behavioral systems
 * Pegasus (workflow management)

In 2011, several ISI natural language experts advised the IBM team that created Watson, the computer that became the first machine to win against human competitors on the Jeopardy! TV show. In 2012, ISI's Kevin Knight spearheaded a successful drive to crack the Copiale cipher, a lengthy encrypted manuscript that had remained unreadable for 250 years. Also in 2012, the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center (QCC) became the first organization to operate a quantum annealing system outside of its manufacturer, D-Wave Systems, Inc. USC, ISI and Lockheed Martin now are performing basic and applied research into quantum computing. A second quantum annealing system is located at NASA Ames Research Center, and is operated jointly by NASA and Google.

The USC Andrew and Erna Viterbi School of Engineering was ranked among the nation's top 10 engineering graduate schools by US News & World Report in 2015. Including ISI, USC is ranked first nationally in federal computer science research and development expenditures.

Organizational structure
ISI is organized into seven divisions focused on differing areas of research expertise:

 * Advanced Electronics: MOSIS shared-services integrated circuit research and fabrication, CMOS and post-CMOS concepts, and biomimetics
 * Computational Systems and Technology: quantum computing; supercomputing; cloud, wireless, reconfigurable and multicore computing; microarchitecture and electronics; science automation technologies; social networks and space systems
 * Informatics Systems Research: grid computing, information security, service-oriented architectures, imaging and medical informatics that aim to transform healthcare discovery processes, practice and delivery.
 * Artificial Intelligence: artificial intelligence in natural language, machine translation, information integration, education, robotics and other disciplines.
 * Networking and Cybersecurity: internet security research and international testbed, internet measurement and monitoring approaches, and sensor networks that emphasize both networking theory and practice.
 * Space Technology and Systems: space research and hands-on involvement for students through the Space Engineering Research Center, operated jointly by ISI and USC.
 * Vision, Image, Speech and Text Analytics: ISI's Center for Vision, Image, Speech and Text Analytics (VISTA) is an internationally recognized leader in areas such as multimedia signal processing, computer vision, and natural language analysis.

Smaller, specialized research groups operate within almost all divisions.

ISI is led by Executive Director Craig Knoblock, the previous director to the AI division.

title: Information Sciences Institute