1967-2007, history of the institute
IRIA finds its bearings
IRIA, like certain other bodies, was a symbol of President de Gaulle's proactive policy to promote the development of ground-breaking technologies in France. Computer Science, dominated by the Americans, was far too important not to be given support... This was especially true given that France had a national champion, the CII (December 1966). IRIA was also set up in response to a desire to develop an institute that would have close ties with industry and be able to inform and educate the nation about Computer Science and Control.
Research under the Plan Calcul
1967 saw the introduction of the Plan Calcul, France's Computation Plan. Among other things, this included setting up a Délégation à l'informatique (a ministerial delegation for Computer Science) and an institute under the direction of Michel Laudet: IRIA.
IRIA was a completely new form of institute, with close ties to the private sector, prefiguring more recent relations between the public sector and industry.
It was conceived as becoming the strong arm of the CII (the Compagnie Internationale d'Informatique).
International, already!
Right from the outset, IRIA began organising international conferences to which it invited everybody who was anybody in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics. The Institute quickly earned an international reputation.
Training has always been one of its priorities: the summer schools were set up in partnership with EDF and the CEA, together with a training centre: the Centre for practical studies in Computer Science and Control (the CEPIA), which, in its very first year, held a total of 5,000 hours of classes.
Tricky beginnings
In 1973, André Danzin structured IRIA around the SESORI (the Service de synthèse et d'orientation de la recherche en informatique - directed by Michel Monpetit and charged with ensuring accordance with the Plan Calcul) and the Laboria (the Laboratoire de recherche en informatique et en automatique) headed by Jacques-Louis Lions. The Laboria was run on the basis of research projects, with set objectives, its own resources, project leaders and project deadlines. However, with only 80 researchers, the Laboria was not big enough.
Around the same time:
- 1967
IBM built the first disk drive.
Chip cards were invented practically simultaneously by researchers in Germany, Japan and America.
Colour TV became available in France.
- 1969
First Boeing 747 flight.
First man on the moon.
- 1971
Intel launched the sale of its first Intel 4004 microprocessor.
Pascal and C language.
First version of Unix launched.
At IRIA
- 1971
Louis Pouzin was involved in the invention of the datagram.
- 1973
IRIA worked with Dassault Aviation on calculating transonic flow for aircraft.