Find out what went on before the first connection: The teasers; the plans for a network (e.g. Shapiro's paper); the RFQs and the BBN papers; the first two dozen RFCs (1-19 precede the first IMP); then, the phenomenal growth which led from 6-bit to 8-bit addressing; the first applications; where TCP/IP and OSI came from; and a few (humourous) anecdotes.
Peter H. Salus is the author of ``A Quarter Century of UNIX'' (Addison-Wesley, 1994) and ``Casting the Net: From ARPANET to Internet and Beyond'' (Addison-Wesley, 1995).