Thursday, June 17, 2010

Fifty Years Of DARPA: Hits, Misses And Ones To Watch

From New Scientist:

Successful projects

The internet: Precisely who 'invented' the mass of linked computer networks that is today's internet is a moot point. But it wouldn't have happened without the ARPANET network built by DARPA in the 1960s. The idea was to make a "self-healing" communications network that still worked when parts of it were destroyed. It was the first network to transmit data in discrete chunks, not constant streams, and led to the development of the TCP/IP specification still in use today.

GPS: We would be quite literally lost without today's global positioning system (GPS). But long before the current NAVSTAR GPS satellites were launched, came a constellation of just five DARPA satellites called Transit. First operational in 1960, they gave US Navy ships hourly location fixes as accurate as 200 metres.

Read more ....

My comment: An old post, but one that is still fun to read.

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