The Beginnings: ARPANET

In 1957, the United States government formed the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), a segment of the Department of Defense charged with ensuring U.S. leadership in science and technology with military applications.  Just more than a decade later, in 1969, ARPA established ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet.

ARPANET was a network that connected major computers at the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Stanford Research Institute, and the University of Utah.  Within a couple of years, several other educational and research institutions joined the network.

In response to the threat of nuclear attack, ARPANET was designed to allow continued communication if one or more sites were destroyed.  Unlike today, when millions of people have access to the Internet from home, work, or their public library, ARPANET served only computer professionals, engineers, and scientists who knew their way around its complex workings.

Throughout the 1970s, developers created the protocols used to transfer information over the Internet.  By the early 1980s, Usenet newsgroups and electronic mail had been born.  Most users were affiliated with universities, although libraries began to connect their catalogs to the Internet, too.  During the late 1980s, developers created indices, such as Archie and Wide Area Information Server (WAIS), to keep track of the information on the Internet.  To give users a friendly, easy-to-use interface to work with, the University of Minnesota created its Gopher, a simple menu system for accessing files, in 1991.

For more details, read "Internet History Timeline".

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Copyright © 2001 Introduction to the Internet
Last modified: August 29, 2001