Today in 1958, in response to the launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1 four months earlier, the U.S. Department of Defense issued Directive 5105.15, establishing the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA).
The agency, later renamed DARPA, was created because “the political and defense communities recognized the need for a high-level defense organization to formulate and execute R&D projects that would expand the frontiers of technology beyond the immediate and specific requirements of the Military Services and their laboratories. The Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik showed that a fundamental change was needed in America’s defense science and technology programs.”
One of these “frontiers of technology” was the ARPANET, the forerunner of the internet.