What Was The Internet Originally Called?

In April of 1963 computer scientist J. Licklider published a memorandum on the topic of remotely networked computers entitled “MEMORANDUM FOR: Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network”.

The memo is the first evidence of computer scientists moving towards establishing a geographically distributed network of computers resembling the modern Internet and, for a time, the “intergalactic computer network” nomenclature stuck.

The title fell out of popularity with the introduction of the Advanced Research Projects Agency’s ARPANET in 1969. The term “Internet” to refer to a large network of remote computers would not be put into use until an appearance in a 1974 paper by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn and wouldn’t be popularized until the early 1990s.