from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
Advanced Research Projects Agency
ARPA
DARPA
Defense Advanced Research Project Agency
<body> (DARPA, ARPA) An agency of the US Department of Defense
responsible for the development of new technology for use by
the military. DARPA was established in 1958 in response to
the Soviet launching of Sputnik, with the mission of keeping
the US's military technology ahead of its enemies. DARPA is
independent from other more conventional military R&D and
reports directly to senior DoD management. DARPA has around
240 personnel (about 140 technical) directly managing a $2
billion budget. These figures are "on average" since DARPA
focusses on short (two to four-year) projects run by small,
purpose-built teams.
ARPA was its original name, then it was renamed DARPA (for
Defense) in 1972, then back to ARPA [When?], and then,
incredibly, back to DARPA again on 1996-03-11!
ARPA was responsible for funding development of {ARPANET}
(which grew into the {Internet}), as well as the {Berkeley}
version of {Unix} and {TCP/IP}.
(http://darpa.mil/).
History (http://foldoc.org/pub/misc/darpa).
(1999-07-17)