====== Why was the internet created? 1957: Sputnik launches ARPA ======
 
===== Why was the Internet created? =====


The short answer is: there wasn't a single reason.

The Cold War provided the funding. Military planners were interested in resilient communications. Computer scientists wanted researchers to share expensive computers. Visionaries imagined entirely new ways for people to work together. The Internet grew from all of those ideas, not just one.

One of the most often debated questions is what the original reason for was creating the internet. The answer to the question is often slanted by the geography of who is telling the story. 

===== 1957: Sputnik launches ARPA =====


Sputnik led directly to the creation of ARPA in 1958.

ARPA later funded ARPANET.

That does not automatically mean ARPANET itself was designed as a nuclear-survival network.

With the Soviet Union's launching of Sputnik, the first orbiting satellite, in 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) to address the needs of technology research and development.

While many people contributed to the creation of the internet along the way, many of the early contributors to the internet were working on the project on behalf of ARPA.

The catalyst for the creation of ARPA was the launch of Sputnik, along with the tensions of the cold war in 1957. The goal of ARPA was to address the technology needs of the U.S Department of Defense. ARPA would be the parent of the computer network of the ARPAnet.

According to the DARPA website: 

"For more than fifty years, DARPA has held to a singular and enduring mission: to make pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies for national security."

"The genesis of that mission and of DARPA itself dates to the launch of Sputnik in 1957, and a commitment by the United States that, from that time forward, it would be the initiator and not the victim of strategic technological surprises."

===== Is it ARPA or DARPA that created the ARPANET =====

Throughout the history of the internet we refer to the parent of the internet as ARPA because the computer network that gave birth to the internet was the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). Initially called the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the agency is currently called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). 

What makes the situation more confusing is that ARPA was renamed to DARPA in March 1972, then renamed ARPA in February 1993, and then renamed DARPA again in March 1996. Regardless of the name changes ARPA has always been an agency of the U.S. Department of Defense.

===== 1960s Ideas shaped by the Cold War =====

The RAND Corporation was founded after the second world war as a research agency for the United States armed forces by Douglas Aircraft Company. RAND became an independent, nonprofit organization, that focused mostly on cold war related military issues.

RAND developed some of the earliest ideas about distributed communications networks that would later influence thinking about resilient networking. At the same time, researchers at ARPA were pursuing a different goal: connecting research computers so scientists could share computing resources.

According to the RAND website on Paul Baran and the Origins of the Internet: 

"In 1962, a nuclear confrontation seemed imminent. The United States (US) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) were embroiled in the Cuban missile crisis. Both the US and the USSR were in the process of building hair-trigger nuclear ballistic missile systems. Each country pondered post-nuclear attack scenarios."

"A looming concern was that neither the long-distance telephone plant, nor the basic military command and control network would survive a nuclear attack."

According to their website RAND is the first organization to be called a "think tank." The RAND name originated as a contraction of Research and Development. RAND continues to operate today as a nonprofit research and analysis institution across a broad range of subjects.

While some people still debate whether the original purpose of the internet was for the military, the internet was originally conceived by the RAND Corporation, a think tank that focused mostly on cold war related military issues as RAND pondered post-nuclear attack scenarios

===== Why historians still debate why the Internet was created. =====

Various RAND and DARPA statements connecting early Internet projects to cold war fears and the desire to survive a nuclear attack are stated on their website, not part an isolated study.

The popular story usually presents a single inventor and a single purpose. The real history is more interesting. Cold War strategy created the environment. Government research funded the work. Engineers solved the technical problems. Visionaries imagined entirely new ways computers could connect people. The Internet exists because all of those threads came together.

ARPANET was an experimental computer network. It later became one of the foundations from which today's Internet evolved.