This book was subtitled "The Origins of the Internet". It was a tough read, as they covered a lot of detail. The origins trace back to the Arpanet. ARPA was a department of defense division that looked into future technologies. They initially set out to connect a few computer sites. The contract was won by a small company that did a lot of due diligence for their bid.
Once the few sites were connected across the USA, many others wanted to join. The hardware was expensive. And it took the contractor time to debug the hardware produced by the manufacturer. But they got computers networked. Programs such as email needed to be developed to work with the networked computers.
As more and more sites needed to be connected, and sometimes the sites had different computers and/or networks, there was a need to figure out how to connect disparate networks. That was researched performed by more scientists. And a little after that, local networks needed to be connected. This gave rise to Ethernet networking.
The original contractor for the first work arranged for an anniversary to celebrate everyone involved. They had to invite around 25 different people based on all the work done at different times. One of the principals had already passed away. Others were joining or creating companies to make money off the Internet. This is all prior to the invention of the world wide web. That is a story for a different book.
