Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet

by Katie Hafner

Rumors had persisted for years that the ARPANET had been built to protect national security in the face of a nuclear attack. It was a myth that had gone unchallenged long enough to become widely accepted as fact.

ARPANET. The project had embodied the most peaceful intentions—to link computers at scientific laboratories across the country so that researchers might share computer resources.

himself with the nation’s best scientific minds. Eisenhower was the first president to host a White House dinner specifically to single out the scientific and engineering communities as guests of honor, just as the Kennedys would later play host to artists and musicians.

Time-sharing was, as the term suggests, a new method of giving many users interactive access to computers from individual terminals. The terminals allowed them to interact directly with the mainframe computer. The revolutionary aspect of time-sharing was that it eliminated much of the tedious waiting that characterized batch-process computing. Time-sharing gave users terminals that allowed them to interact directly with the computer and obtain their results immediately.