Norman Abramson designed a network of radio links that allowed the exchange of data among computers located on four of the Hawaiian Islands. At the behest of Robert Taylor, then head of ARPA’s Information Processing Techniques Office, funding was put into a network that sends messages through radio waves to computing it’s feasibility. In 1970 he hired Abramson at the University of Hawaii to take charge of the project. He sets up a system of small radios that transmit on the same frequency, each of them in turn linked to a host computer.
Larry Roberts succeeds Taylor later that year and is also interested in the idea, developing a theory with Bob Kahn on a mobile computer network. The Army becomes interested, and several “packet-radio networks” as they become known as, are installed. Kahn envisions a satellite network that would be capable of transmitting messages anywhere on the planet. Eventually he organizes SATnet, and this development opens the possibility of connecting all networks on a global scale.