Episode Details

Ask who invented the internet and you'll get a clean answer — or you'll get the truth, which is messier and far more interesting. This episode starts with the first ARPANET message on October 29, 1969: grad student Charley Kline types "L" and "O" to Stanford Research Institute before the system crashes. From there, we trace the seven layers of the internet's invention — Licklider's 1963 "Intergalactic Computer Network" memos, Bob Taylor's frustration with three terminals, packet switching invented independently in two countries, and the 1974 TCP/IP paper that turned a network into a network of networks. Along the way we debunk the biggest myth in the story — ARPANET was never built to survive nuclear war — and visit a Portola Valley beer garden where, in 1976, two networks talked to each other for the first time. Episode #988054 — open it directly at myweirdprompts.com/988054