In 1957 the Soviet Union shocked the western world by launching Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the earth. In response, in 1958 the United States created ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency), which is part of the Department of Defense. The goal of ARPA was to establish the United States lead in technology available to the military. 

Throughout the 1960s, much research was done by people trying to figure out how to get computers to talk to each other. In 1962 the Rand Corporation published a report written by Pail Baran which was called "On Distributed Communications Networks" which recommended the creation of a decentralized communications network. In this and other reports he also made other recommendations including the establishment of packet switching and a "store and forward" network. The major purpose of this network was to have the ability to survive a major nuclear attack. 

In 1965 ARPA sponsored a study on the "cooperative network of time-sharing computers". In 1966 the first ARPANET study was initiated. 

It was in 1967 that the DOD commissioned linking together several educational facilities in a network.
Four sites (UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, University of California Santa Barbara and the University of Utah) were finally linked in 1969 via a 50kbps line provided by AT&T. 

Dave Crocker (one of the men on the team) mentioned that they were nervous of offending the "official protocol designers", so they started issuing notes under the title "Request for Comments", which later was shortened to RFC. 

After the first four sites were connected, other sites joined the young network, continuing the implementation goal of connecting 16 research groups. The growth of the ARPANET continued over the next few years until in 1983 it had over 4,000 hosts. 

Formation of the Internet

In 1972, the first International Conference on Computer Communications was held in Washington DC.
Visitors from many countries where shown the ARPANET, and the need for a common set of standards for the network was discussed. This led to the formation of the Internetwork Working Group. They also concluded that other networks similar to ARPANET could be connected, thus making it possible to build one huge network. This led to the beginning of the concept of the "internet" and the name itself. 

It was very difficult to get connected to the ARPANET as it was still a governmental, military and research network. This was realized and a group known as CSNET was set up by the NSF (National Science Foundation). The purpose was to allow other entities to get connected. 

The internet got a big boost in 1986 when the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) initiated development of NSFNET. Today this provides a major backbone to the internet. In addition NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and the U.S. Department of Energy added to the
growing network. They contributed NSINET and ESNET respectively. The ARPANET was disbanded and commercial internet providers were put in place.