Today in 1967, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) at the United States Department of Defense issued a four-month contract to Stanford Research Institute (SRI) for the purpose of studying the “design and specification of a computer network.”
SRI was expected to report on the effects of selected network tasks on Interface Message Processors (today’s routers) and “the communication facilities serving highly responsive networks.” In August of 1968, ARPA sent out a RFQ to 140 companies, and in December 1968, awarded the contract for building the first 4 IMPs to Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN). These will become the first nodes of the network we know today as the Internet.