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Its goal was not maintaining communications during a nuclear attack, and it didn't build the Internet. Robert Taylor, who ran the ARPA program in the 1960s, sent an email to fellow technologists in 2004 setting the record straight: "The creation of the Arpanet was not motivated by considerations of war. The Arpanet was not an Internet. An Internet is a connection between two or more computer networks."

I'm calling *BULL$H*T" on Taylor and that statement. Why?

There are word games being played here, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) developed the network prototype for what would become the Internet not for the purpose of communications DURING a nuclear attack, but AFTER such an attack, should other means of electronic communications be rendered unreliable or unusable due to EMP. The whole concept of 'data packet switching' began with DARPA. It is TRUE that the objective was to develop a reliable means of communication between one or more computers, that is what a network IS.

And if that isn't enough, my late father worked for all of his adult life in the Department of Defense, and his latter years at ERADCOM (Electronics Research And Development Command), and without disclosing any classified data, he made clear to me that DARPA's goals were primarily oriented around preparation and defensive measures to secure and fortify our communications in a time of war.

But of course in the end, Barky is probably right, after all 0bama (P*ss Be Upon Him) speaks nothing but truth, right? ;)

Heck, the guy doesn’t even understand the protocols he’s talking about. He’s describing Ethernet as a protocol for connecting networks together. This is false. Ethernet is a local area network protocol for creating a network. He does mention TCP/IP, and that’s the important one for connecting networks together. Ethernet just happens to be the protocol which won, but there have been plenty of various LAN protocols over time.

I can remember using ARPANET back in my undergrad days before the internet really got opened to general use. Back then it was restricted mostly to universities, defense and research labs.

It was when Tim Bethers-Lee came up with the html protocol at CERN that the internet exploded. Before that it was limited to email and netnews groups which were just text based forums. I spent a lot of time on those old forums.

I can still remember when the post doc came into the lab to show off Mosaic to demonstrate this new web thing. The software was extremely buggy and there was about nothing to connect to in any case. Amazing how far it has all come.

There is some truth to the contention that the government invented the internet, but only in terms of the DARPA projects as you say, though the guy invented html on CERN’s dime which is government as well. Fully blossoming it into what it is today was a matter of private enterprise and it really does show the value of the free market because the whole internet/web area of commerce was so poorly understood by governments that they didn’t vaguely know how to start regulating it. Thus it was not strangled in infancy.

All of you are right on...

In it's zeal to push the use of UNIX as a major mainframe OS, AT&T gave thousands of it's 3B mainframes to colleges across the country - and it was to these colleges, and AT&T facilities, and military bases that AT&T hooked together that became the first 'network' between computers.

When the government became involved and DARPANET used this network, and the first network communications became a reality. Simple text communication via 'email' became a part of that communication later. But prior to email sharing of major documents was the first BIG THING on that network.