High Performance Computing and Communications: Archived at NLM | Sally Howe | Sept 2017 | US National Library of Medicine

"People today might use their smart phones without even thinking about how they work, let alone about the infrastructure that enables us to communicate and compute at a global (actually interplanetary) scale, but today’s reality is built on yesterday’s imagination. Trailblazers had to envision something like today’s information infrastructure and to communicate their foresight in such a way that stakeholders and users would willingly work together over decades to realize it. Much of that envisioning took place in the 1980s and early 1990s and led to the creation of the Federal High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) Program. Begun in 1992, the HPCC Program and its National Coordination Office (NCO) coordinated Federal research and development in high-performance computing, high-capacity and high-speed networking, and information technology by Federal science and technology agencies. HPCC initially included four large agencies—ARPA, DOE, NASA, and NSF—and four smaller ones—EPA, NIST, NLM, and NOAA. There are now 14 agencies in the successor Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD). NLM participates under the NIH umbrella...."