The origins of the Internet

Lotta folks think the internet is a case of government done good.

Actually, strictly speaking, the Internet is about 20 web pages describing a message exchange protocol, written by about three authors or so in the 70s. More generally, this Internet is one of about four proposals at the time, and the collapse of all the proposals into a single one happened because the technology was too simple in any proposal to quibble the details. In fact, X25, an alternative coexisted with the Internet for five years. The real inventor of packet switching was Samuel Morse; today the microprocessor automated the procedure.