Finding a Name

The inauguration of the new hall coincided with the search for a new name for this exhibit category. One suggestion was "CeBIT" - from the German acronym for "Centrum für Büro und Organisationstechnik" "Literally Center for Office and Organization". Ultimately, however, the Exhibitors' Advisory Committee decided in favour of "CeBIT" from "Centrum für Büro und Informationstechnik" (Center for Office and Information Technology). The second syllable's apparent allusion to "BIT" (as the smallest unit information processed by Computers) was not at all intended, but ultimately turned out to be a very fortunate coincidence, especially in view of the upwind experienced by electronic data processing in the Seventies, and even more so in the Eighties, when the ranks of HANNOVER MESSE's exhibitors swelled with huge numbers of PC manufactures.

Nevertheless, in 1970 no one could have foreseen the extent to which the data processing market would divide into more and more segments and grow at a breathtaking rate. The gigantic capacities in Hall 1 were soon exhausted. At the end of the 1970s Deutsche Messe decided to allocate Halls 2 and 18 to CeBIT. At the beginning of the 1980s CeBIT expanded once again - this time into Hall 3. However, this was just a drop in the ocean. More and more data processing and software companies - not to mention the growing group of PC manufacturers - wanted to use CeBIT as a presentation platform. The original "Center for Office and Information Technology" had now become the "World Center for Office, Information and Communications Technology".