More
fascinating facts from the history wizard's archives
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The
Internet: A Cold War Baby
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The
internet is actually older than most people realize and came about
because of cold war fear. After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik
in 1957, Americans became frantic that they were falling behind
the Soviet Union technologically. The government quickly moved give
America an edge in the cold war. They passed the National Defense
Education Act to improve the science and math skills of the children,
created NASA to launch the space race, and create the Advanced Research
Projects Agency (ARPA) to develop an alternative communication system
that could enable the military to function in the event of a nuclear
strike.
It
was ARPA who developed what we know today as the internet (originally
called ARPANet). Though it has long since outgrown its original
purpose, the internet is very much a child of the cold war.
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