ARPANET

In 1969, the ARPANET looked like this.

The Internet as you know it today, and through which you are accessing this information, had its beginnings in the late 1960s as the "ARPANET". Started by the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the entire network consisted of just four computers linked together from different sites to conduct research in wide-area networking.

SRI, then known as the Stanford Research Institute, hosted one of the four original network nodes, along with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. The very first transmission on the ARPANET, on October 29, 1969, was from UCLA to SRI.

By 1972, the ARPANET comprised 37 computers. In 1983, the ARPANET was opened up to universities and various scientific bodies. Since then, this small network has grown into the Internet we know today.

For many years, SRI also managed the Network Information Center, which assigned top-level domain names to network hosts.

For more information about the ARPANET, visit the Computer History Museum website.