The Early Beginnings of the Internet, Born Out of the Cuban Missile Crisis

[one...two...tree 2,762]

One interesting result of the Cuban Missile Crisis is something you are using right now- the Internet.

Almost immediately after the crisis was over, the Pentagon began to worry how if a Soviet first strike took out NY and Washington, how could communications be kept going to launch a retaliation?

Rand Researcher Paul Baran and Welshman Donald Davies conceived of a web of communication, like the synapses of a human brain. The information would not go out in a steady stream like electric current but be sent in packets, like the DNA contained in a chromosome. These packets would move at lightning speed around a communications “net.”

Scientists Leonard Kleinrock, Lawrence Roberts and JCR Licklider worked on the idea for a few years and by 1968 had the design ready. Team leader Robert Taylor wrote in their paper Computer as a Communication Device: “In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face.”

The Internet went on-line Nov 1969.

Ed Catmull - one of the engineering founders of Pixar, once said, "I tease my Libertarian friends who say isn't the internet a wonderful thing?...yes, thanks to government money."

Edited October 27, 2012 by Commie Appeaser

[spookyturtle 9,465]

I call BS. Everyone knows that Al Gore invented the internet.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I call BS. Everyone knows that Al Gore invented the internet.

I know that's a long running joke, but for the record, Al Gore never claimed he did. What he claimed truthfully and correctly, was that he approved the modern expansion of today's internet.