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In the late 1960’s, scientists face a fundamental question regarding computing. In what direction will the future go? The big corporations, IBM and others, want to build centralized, large computers that people must go to. Others want computers to be smaller and not centralized and be linked together remotely. The link? A thing that will become known as the Internet.
ARPANET: Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. There are two versions why ARPANET was started: 1. To exploit new computer technologies to meet the needs of military command and control against nuclear threats, achieve survivable control of US nuclear forces, and improve military tactical and management decision making. 2. Out of the frustration that there were only a limited number of large, powerful research computers in the country, and that many research investigators, who should have access to them, were geographically separated from them.
Regardless. What we call the Internet would never have happened if ARPANET had failed.
The first message ever sent was from a computer in a lab at UCLA to a computer in a lab at Stanford, on 29 October 1969. The image above is the entire extent of the Internet at the end of 1969 via landline.
