The story begins in 1957 with the launching of Sputnik, which sent
shivers up the spines of the cold warriors. Money began pouring from the
defense establishment into open-ended technical research and education.
ARPA-funded university nerds developed digital communications protocols,
and started a modest network; RAND and the Stanford Research Institute were
also involved. Later the Palo Alto Research Center, a unique nerdy think
tank owned by Xerox, played an important role. Soon after an affordable
microprocessor chip appeared in 1974, the PhD nerds were eclipsed by the
homebrew computer nerds. Over the next twenty years, everything got twice
as fast, with twice the memory, and half as expensive, over and over again
every few years. This book focuses on personalities, but the Internet was
mostly driven by advances in hardware. The people involved, while quaint
and capable, merely happened to be in the right place at the right time.
ISBN 1-57500-088-1
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