In 1969 the Pentagon commissioned ARPANET for research into networking. The following year, Vinton Cerf and others published their first proposals for protocols that would allow computers to 'talk' to each other. ARPANET began operating Network Control Protocol (NCP), the first host-to-host protocol.
In 1974 Vint Cerf joined Bob Kahn to present their 'Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection' specifying the detailed design of the 'Transmission Control Program' (TCP) - the basis of the modern Internet. In 1978 TCP was split into TCP (now short for Transmission Control Protocol) and IP (Internet Protocol).
In 1982 TCP/IP was established as the protocol for ARPANET. This provided one of the first definitions of an internet as a connected set of networks using TCP/IP, but defining 'the Internet' as all connected TCP/IP internets.The launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik in 1957 threw the American military and scientific establishment into near panic with visions of Soviet weapons in space striking a helpless America. As part of the response, in 1959 the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was formed within the Pentagon to establish an American lead in military science and technology.
By the early 1960s the first theories of computer networking were starting to be shaped and in 1965 ARPA sponsored a study on 'co-operative network of time-sharing computers'.
Lawrence G. Roberts, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in October 1966, shaped the first such plan. Designs for such a network were put forward the following year and in 1968 the Pentagon sent out requests for proposals for ARPANET - a computer network to unite America's military and scientific establishments.