A little internet history

      This is going to be from memory from the very early 70s however I did happen to know some of the people who were involved or at least one of them. I bring this up as the companies who had the idea are remembered the lowly civil servants are rarely remembered.
      The conception was by ARPA (DARPA to those outside DOD) the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. This is the agency that started the Stealth bomber technology. It has a good reputation. I "think" the person in charge of the project at ARPA was Randy Cook but I can't swear to it. If he was, I have no idea what his relationship to the project might have been save that he was in the headquarters operation.
      The project engineer, the man who really did the technical work was Theo Kooij (he said to pronounce it as in "playing coy" and the first name is like Tayoh,) a Dutch National who somehow had some sort of an intergovernment security clearance. When I met him he was disgruntled with the management of the Navy's ship design facitlity (David Taylor Model Basin now the David Taylor, Naval Ship Research and Development Center -- DT,NSRDC, unless it has changed again and it probably has. It is the one in Carderock, Maryland.) He was looking for a new project and I was responsible for funding a research area in sonar. He came around to see what I was interested and what he could interest me in.
      For reasons other reasons (nasty interdepartment politics I believe but I never found out exactly what the problem was) that never came about -- and my interests had nothing to do with anything remotely resembling the internet. In any event he did find a project at ARPA, to develop ARPANet. It was originally intended to link DOD and its contractors and interested people for the purpose of what it does now, information exchange save it was expected to be a bit more business-like.
      He did the work out of the ARPA Research Center, the ARC, which I believe was located at Moffett Field in California.
      ARPA has a policy of only getting things started but not supporting them afterwards so it got a group of companies and universities (mainly the latter) to take over running it.
      Also an obvious problem developed for much of the intended DOD use, there was no way to keep classified information secure so a lot of its original intention never appeared. (The "hacking" talents of the average computer nerd were greatly underestimated back then.)
      So after that start ARPANet grew to become the internet under the management of business and industry. If you are familiar with the traditional university attitude you can see why it developed into what is effectively an unmanaged thing.
      In the good old days all you needed to get an account was to be interested in something on it. There was a short period where a need had to be demonstrated, around the time computer break-ins were a novelty for the media, but that didn't last long. I looked at getting a "node" or .gov in my office at the time. All I had to do was buy a VAX, set up a special room and hire a couple of specialists to run it. (My boss was not amused by the idea.) That would have given my office much less than I have today on my desk in the rec room but then, such is progress.
      I do not know much more about the start than that. It isn't much but it is another bit of history that should be remembered. ARPA is in the phonebook (Arlington Virginia unless they have moved and certainly the DOD switchboard could give some help) for anyone serious about tracking down its history.
      Any way, that is the best I can tell you. Randy Cook was some place in the Pentagon last I heard. I have no idea where Theo Kooij is these days. Probably retired or close to it.