ARPANET

Dr. Mills was among the inner circle of computer scientists who in the 1960s through the ’90s developed Arpanet, a relatively small network of linked computers located at academic and research institutions, and then its globe-spanning successor, the internet.

There, he worked with Al Gore, then a senator, to craft legislation to make the military’s computer network, Arpanet, available to civilian researchers through the foundation’s NSFnet.

The Arpanet transmitted information among about 20 academic and corporate labs across the country.

Kleinrock is in a strong position to know: His pioneering work in the 1970s in developing packet switching, a process through which data is transmitted across digital networks in so-called "packets," was critical in developing ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet.

It resembles the investments government made in the 1960s to develop ARPANET, the first, rough version of the Internet, and, later, the Global Positioning System.