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Internet History 1962 To 1992
Internet History 1962 To 1992
And the spirit of ARPA moved upon the face of the network and ARPA said, 'Let there be a protocol,' and there was a
protocol. And ARPA saw that it was good.
And ARPA said, 'Let there be more protocols,' and it was so. And ARPA saw that it was good.
And ARPA said, 'Let there be more networks,' and it was so."Danny Cohen
This Internet Timeline begins in 1962, before the word 'Internet' is invented. The world’s 10,000 computers are
primitive, although they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. They have only a few thousand words of
magnetic core memory, and programming them is far from easy.
Domestically, data communication over the phone lines is an AT T monopoly. The 'Picturephone' of 1939,
shown again at the New York World's Fair in 1964, is still AT&T’s answer to the future of worldwide
communications.
But the four-year old Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense, a future-
oriented funder of ‘high-risk, high-gain’ research, lays the groundwork for what becomes the ARPANET and,
much later, the Internet.