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USSR's launch of Sputnik spurred the United States to create the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA or DARPA) in February 1958 to regain a technological lead, and interconnect their computers at the Pentagon, Cheyenne Mountain, and SAC HQ source
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early ARPANET ran on the Network Control Program (NCP), a standard designed and first implemented in December 1970 by a team called the Network Working Group (NWG) led by Steve Crocker source
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Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn developed the first description of the now widely used TCP protocols during 1973 and published a paper on the subject in May 1974. source
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Following the demonstration that packet switching worked on the ARPANET, the British Post Office, Telenet, DATAPAC and TRANSPAC collaborated to create the first international packet-switched network service. In the UK, this was referred to as the International Packet Switched Service (IPSS), in 1978. The collection of X.25-based networks grew from Europe and the US to cover Canada, Hong Kong and Australia by 1981. source
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The first TCP/IP-based wide-area network was operational by January 1, 1983 when all hosts on the ARPANET were switched over from the older NCP protocols. source
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1985, the United States' National Science Foundation (NSF) commissioned the construction of the NSFNET, a university 56 kilobit/second network backbone. source
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NSF sponsored the conversion to a higher-speed 1.5 megabit/second network. source
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The Web was invented by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. source
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On 6 August 1991, CERN, a pan European organization for particle research, publicized the new World Wide Web project. source
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The estimated population of Internet users is 1.67 billion as of June 30, 2009. source
