In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Pople group at Carnegie-Mellon University began to develop a general purpose computer code, based on the use of gaussian basis functions, in order to enable molecular electronic structure calculations.  The initial computer program, called Gaussian70, was made freely available to users via the Quantum Chemistry Program Exchange (QCPE).  Subsequent versions, through Gaussian80, were distributed in the same manner.

Above text was excerpted from: http://bannedbygaussian.org