Editing 1972 in science (section)

==Computer science==
* April 6 – [[Cray Research]] founded.<ref>{{cite web|title=Cray Timeline|url=http://www.cray.com/Assets/PDF/about/CrayTimeline.pdf|publisher=Cray|accessdate=2011-04-04|archive-date=2011-03-31|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110331035544/http://www.cray.com/Assets/PDF/about/CrayTimeline.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref>
* May – [[Magnavox]] release the first home [[video game console]] which can be connected to a television set – the [[Magnavox Odyssey]], invented by [[Ralph H. Baer]].<ref>{{cite book|title=Game Industry Career Guide|last1=Moore|first1=Michael E.|last2=Novak|first2=Jeannie|year=2010|publisher=Cengage Learning|location=Delmar|isbn=978-1-4283-7647-2|page=7|quote=In 1966, Ralph H. Baer ... pitched an idea ... to create interactive games to be played on the television. Over the next two years, his team developed the first video game system—and in 1968, they demonstrated the "Brown Box," a device on which several games could be played and that used a light gun to shoot targets on the screen. After several more years of development, the system was licensed by Magnavox in 1970 and the first game console system, the Odyssey, was released in 1972 at the then high price of $100.}}</ref>
* July 12 – First [[C compiler]] released.<ref name="V2">{{cite book |first1=Ken |last1=Thompson |first2=Dennis M. |last2=Ritchie |title=UNIX Programmer's Manual, Second Edition |date=June 12, 1972 |publisher=Bell Telephone Laboratories |url=http://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/unix/UnixArchive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/1972_stuff/unix_2nd_edition_manual.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161006034736/http://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/unix/UnixArchive/PDP-11/Distributions/research/1972_stuff/unix_2nd_edition_manual.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-date=2016-10-06 }}</ref>
* October – The First [[International Conference on Computer Communications]] is held in [[Washington, D.C.]], and hosts the first public demonstration of [[ARPAnet]], a precursor of the [[Internet]].
* November 29 – [[Atari, Inc.|Atari]] release the production version of ''[[Pong]]'', one of the [[first video game]]s, devised by [[Nolan Bushnell]] and [[Allan Alcorn]].
* [[Karen Spärck Jones]] introduces the concept of [[inverse document frequency]] (idf) weighting in information retrieval.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Spärck Jones|first=K.|doi=10.1108/eb026526|title=A Statistical Interpretation of Term Specificity and Its Application in Retrieval|journal=Journal of Documentation|volume=28|pages=11–21|year=1972|citeseerx=10.1.1.115.8343|s2cid=2996187 }}</ref>
* [[Write-only memory (engineering)|Write-only memory]] is devised as a [[Write-only memory (joke)|joke]] in [[Signetics]].<ref>{{cite web|first=Bob|last=Pease|title=The origin of the WOM – the "Write Only Memory"|url=http://portal.national.com/rap/Story/WOMorigin.html|publisher=[[National Semiconductor]]|accessdate=2012-11-11|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110910041413/http://portal.national.com/rap/Story/WOMorigin.html|archive-date=2011-09-10|url-status=dead}}</ref>