The internet as we know it doesn’t exist until much later, but internet history starts in the 1960s. In 1962, MIT computer scientist J.C.R. Licklider comes up with the idea for a global computer network. He later shares his idea with colleagues at the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Work by Leonard Kleinrock, Thomas Merrill and Lawrence G. Roberts on packet-switching theory pioneers the way to the world’s first wide-area computer network. Roberts later goes on to publish a plan for the ARPANET, an ARPA-funded computer network that becomes a reality in 1969. Over the following years, the ARPANET grows.