How nuclear fears helped inspire creation of the internet
aeon.co · 4,952 words · saved by 1 readers
How the hair-trigger nuclear age and fears of Armageddon inspired visionary cold warriors to invent the internet
‘We have some big trouble,’ president John F Kennedy told his brother, the attorney general Bobby Kennedy, early in the morning of 16 October 1962. A few hours later, the younger Kennedy was staring at pictures of Cuba taken by the U-2 surveillance aircraft. ‘Those sons of bitches, Russians,’ he said, sitting in the White House with a group of officials dedicated to overthrowing Fidel Castro. The pictures showed the telltale signs of Soviet missile launchers. The CIA had used a massive computer – which took the better part of a room to house – to calculate the precise measurements and…
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