Passage: The origins of DES go back to the early 1970s. In 1972, after concluding a study on the US government's computer security needs, the US standards body NBS (National Bureau of Standards)—now named NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)—identified a need for a government-wide standard for encrypting unclassified, sensitive information. Accordingly, on 15 May 1973, after consulting with the NSA, NBS solicited proposals for a cipher that would meet rigorous design criteria. None of the submissions, however, turned out to be suitable. A second request was issued on 27 August 1974. This time, IBM submitted a candidate which was deemed acceptable—a cipher developed during the period 1973–1974 based on an earlier algorithm, Horst Feistel's Lucifer cipher. The team at IBM involved in cipher design and analysis included Feistel, Walter Tuchman, Don Coppersmith, Alan Konheim, Carl Meyer, Mike Matyas, Roy Adler, Edna Grossman, Bill Notz, Lynn Smith, and Bryant Tuckerman.

Question: What era dod DES begin?
early 1970s