In
1969 the Pentagon commissioned ARPANET for research into networking. The following
year, Vinton Cerf and others published their first proposals for protocols that
would allow computers to 'talk' to each other. ARPANET began operating Network
Control Protocol (NCP), the first host-to-host protocol.In 1974 Vint Cerf joined
Bob Kahn to present their 'Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection' specifying
the detailed design of the 'Transmission Control Program' (TCP) - the basis of
the modern Internet. In 1978 TCP was split into TCP (now short for Transmission
Control Protocol) and IP (Internet Protocol).In 1982 TCP/IP was established as
the protocol for ARPANET. This provided one of the first definitions of an internet
as a connected set of networks using TCP/IP, but defining 'the Internet' as all
connected TCP/IP internets.The launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik in 1957
threw the American military and scientific establishment into near panic with
visions of Soviet weapons in space striking a helpless America.
As part of the
response, in 1959 the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was formed within
the Pentagon to establish an American lead in military science and technology.By
the early 1960s the first theories of computer networking were starting to be
shaped and in 1965 ARPA sponsored a study on 'co-operative network of time-sharing
computers'.Lawrence G. Roberts, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
in October 1966, shaped the first such plan. Designs for such a network were put
forward the following year and in 1968 the Pentagon sent out requests for proposals
for ARPANET - a computer network to unite America's military and scientific establishments.
