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so Sputnik definitely scared the living daylights out of American military types

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and science folks but the US was also afraid of what might happen if the USSR

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[telephones exploding] took out all of America's telephones this would have been a lot easier than

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it sounds at that time the Soviets would only need

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a single well-placed missile to knock out the whole shebang and without the [USSR missile heading towards USA on a map]

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telephone system America had no efficient means of long-distance

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communication a letter from DC to LA saying the Russians are coming the

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Russians are coming probably wouldn't get there in time half the country would [mail man delivering letters]

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have been eating borscht by the time the mailman showed up well that wouldn't

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have been the worst thing in the world though borscht is pretty good well so

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[military men marching down a road] being overtaken by a foreign power thing however really would have sucked

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so in 1962 an MIT ARPA scientist named JCR Licklider came up with a crazy idea

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to solve the problem to protect the u.s. from this potential threat Licklider

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suggested we create a galactic network of computers that could communicate with

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[alien frantically typing on keyboard] each other well galactic might have been a little

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extreme but the powers that be thought the idea of a computer network was just

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swell well this was just kind of network that government military leaders needed

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to communicate with each other if the Soviets ever took down the phone system [Red envelopes bouncing off computers]

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how else were they going to coordinate who was where and what to the ball and

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obviously defend the country in case of attack all right Lickliders crazy

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idea eventually became the ARPANET which was the warm-up act for our modern-day

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internet of course the ARPANET idea had a big glaring problem if the Soviets [computers with big tomatos squished on the screens]

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could take out the phones with a missile what was to stop them from

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taking out the ARPANET well MIT came up with an answer to that

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in 1965 and introduced the concept of packet switching sounds like a thing [a package exchanging hands]

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spies in trench coats do on park benches but packet switching was actually a way

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of breaking down data into blocks before zapping it off to you know wherever it's [a computer with little packages sent from it]

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going well this let each little packet go its own direction as it travel and

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wasn't until 1969 that the ARPANET sent its first message well this was done through

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what's known as a node to node communication which connects one [two computers side by side]

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computer to another oh yeah that's one computer to only one other computer

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Sometimes we have to start small right both of these individual computers were

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gigantic talking the size of a house like a little house but still a house [a house with two old computers either side]

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there also weren't very far apart one was at a lab at Stanford and the other

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was at UCLA meaning both we're in California tensions were high as the

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UCLA lab started entering the short and sweet message log in oh what a glorious [three men in white coats in a lab]

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moment well the internet was being born heavenly music was being played angels

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were singing that is until the ARPANET work crashed after only transmitting the

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first two letters okay okay it wasn't exactly the most auspicious of

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[facebook symbols floating off the screen] beginnings but wasn't long before those angels were singing again and posting

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pictures of themselves doing the ice bucket challenge on Facebook

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