A Brief History of the Internet
ARPANET was based upon the design concepts of Larry Roberts (MIT) and was fleshed out at the first ACM colloquium, held in Gaithersburg, TN in 1966, although RFPs weren't sent out until mid 1968.
The responsibility of security in 1969 commissioned ARPANET, and the first node was created at the University of California in Los Angeles, administration on a Honeywell DDP-516 mini-computer. The second node was recognized at Standford University and launched on October first of the same year. The third node was situated at the University of California, Santa Barbara November 1, 1969 and the fourth was opened at the University of Utah in December.