Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
It wasn't created for that at all. It was created to provide a self-rerouting network for military command and control computers in the event of a nuclear attack. Its civilian uses were merely coincidental.
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I'm totally open to debate of the point, and I hate citing Wikipedia as a source, but for convenience and to not to derail the thread too much:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET...f_design_goals
"Charles Herzfeld, ARPA Director (1965–1967), said:
The ARPANET was not started to create a Command and Control System that would survive a nuclear attack, as many now claim. To build such a system was, clearly, a major military need, but it was not ARPA's mission to do this; in fact, we would have been severely criticized had we tried. Rather, the ARPANET came out of our frustration that there were only a limited number of large, powerful research computers in the country, and that many research investigators, who should have access to them, were geographically separated from them.[13]"
I stand by my position.