Internet started life under another name, grew up; turns 36

Today it's 36 years ago the Internet's predecessor, ARPANet, became operational. In those days the whole network fitted on the proverbial napkin, in this case one belonging to Lawrence G. Roberts, the ARPA guy who headed up the project.

Larry Roberts presented his plan first at a symposium in 1967, got the budget, wrote the brief, and awarded the job to IT consultancy Bolt, Beranek and Newman. BBN built a network of four nodes. Each node was a small computer called an Interface Message Processor (IMP), the first routers ever built. They connected the four computers on the network using 56kbps digital links over leased lines.

The first of these links was established on November 21st, 1969, between UCLA and Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, Ca. Two weeks later the network was up and running. The rest, as they say, is history.