History consists of a series of accumulated imaginative inventions.

–Voltaire

The aim of this chapter is to outline the milestones that led to the establishment of the Internet as we know it today, from its inception as an idea in the 1950s until the early 21st century. The varied and complex social and technological transformations we witness today have their roots in the way the Internet was conceived. This survey shows that the Internet was developed through research grants from the US Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency. Scientists wanted to establish a system for maintaining communication links between distant locations in the event that the electrical route was destroyed. The early Internet was devised and implemented in American research units, universities, and telecommunication companies that had vision and interest in cutting-edge research. The program grew in the 1960s and 1970s, becoming a network of computers designed to transmit information by packet switching. In 1983, Ithiel de Sola Pool wrote in what has become a classic text:

The network of computers was, from the start, an open, diffused multi-platform. Up until the 1990s, the network developed in the United States and then, within a few years, expanded globally at remarkable pace and with no less impressive technological innovations, the end of which we are yet to witness. In its postwar incarnation, the Internet has transformed into a global system for sharing ideas and data and for exchanging text, graphics, software, music, and video clips to almost 2 billion Netusers in nearly 200 countries.