The Essentials of Computer Organization and Architecture, 6th Edition

12.3 EARLY ACADEMIC AND SCIENTIFIC NETWORKS: THE ROOTS AND ARCHITECTURE OF THE INTERNET

Amid the angst of the Cold War, American scientists at far-flung research institutions toiled under government contracts, seeking to preserve the military ascendancy of the United States. At a time when the country had fallen behind in the technology race, the U.S. government created an organization called the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). The sophisticated computers this organization needed to carry out its work, however, were scarce and extremely costly—even by Pentagon standards. Before long, it occurred to someone that by establishing communication links into the few supercomputers that were scattered all over the United States, computational ...