The Birth of the Internet From Two Present at Creation

[Commentary] L. Gordon Crovitz dismisses as "modest" the government role in creating the Internet and claims that the private sector deserves "full credit" for its invention ("Who Really Invented the Internet?," Information Age, July 23). He asserts that it is important to understand the true history of the Internet because that story is "too often wrongly cited to justify big government." Crovitz is not alone in failing to understand the complex ecosystem involving government, academia and the private sector that has made our nation the world leader in information technology. Thanks in large part to U.S. government efforts to involve the private sector from the early days, companies—many newly created to pursue Internet technology—were able to build on the knowledge from these pilot projects to begin deploying what would become today's Internet. The story of the Internet reveals a remarkable success story of how government, academia and the private sector worked together over several decades to create one of the most revolutionary technologies ever invented and deployed on a large scale.

[Cerf is the co-inventor of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. Wolff directed the evolution of the NSFnet as it built on the Arpanet's success to become the primary internetwork for the U.S. higher-education community.]