Where Wizards Stay Up Late - The Origins of the Internet

Twenty five years ago, it didn't exist. Today, twenty million people worldwide are surfing the Net. Where Wizards Stay Up Late is the exciting story of the pioneers responsible for creating the most talked about, most influential, and most far-reaching communications breakthrough since the invention of the telephone. In the 1960's, when computers where regarded as mere giant calculators, J.C.R. Licklider at MIT saw them as the ultimate communications devices. With Defense Department funds, he and a band of visionary computer whizzes began work on a nationwide, interlocking network of computers. Taking readers behind the scenes, Where Wizards Stay Up Late captures the hard work, genius, and happy accidents of their daring, stunningly successful venture. "The Internet has changed our lives. It has revolutionized research, altered the world of retailing, and caused virtually every institution to redefine itself. Meanwhile, e-mail has become an indispensable means of communication. But only a few decades ago the internetwas the 'Wizards Stay Up Late' is the fascinating story of the pioneers who created breakthrough since the telephone. In the 1960s, when computers where regarded as mere giant calculators, J.C.R. Licklider at MIT saw them as the ultimate communications devices. With Defense Department funds, he had a band of visionary computer whizzes began work on a nationwide, interlocking network of computers. Taking readers behind the scenes, 'Where Wizards Stay Up Late' captures the hard work, genius, and happ accidents of their darling, stunningly successful venture"--Page 4 of cover In the late 1960s, the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency funded at project to create computer communication among its university-based researchers. The experiment was inspired by J.C.R. Licklider, a brilliant scientist from MIT who saw the potential of computers as communications devices. This is the story of the small group of researchers and engineers who laid the foundation for the Internet. In 1969, Arpa awarded the contract for the most integral part of this network--the Interface Message Processor (IMP) switch--to Bolt Beranek and Newman, a small Cambridge, Mass., company. Out of their efforts a nationwide network called the ARPANET grew from four initial sites, eventually merging in 1990 with the Internet it had spawned Story of the scientists behind the creation of the Internet and describes the effort funded by the Defense Department and the technologies that contributed to its monumental growth Bob Taylor usually drove to work, thirty minutes through the rolling countryside northeast of Washington, over the Potomac River to the Pentagon. The story of the small group of researchers and engineers whose invention, daring in its day, became the foundation for the Internet