This Day In Market History: DARPA Is Formed To Fight The Cold War

Each day, Benzinga takes a look back at a notable market-related moment that occurred on this date.

What Happened? On Feb. 7, 1958, the U.S. Department of Defense founded the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Where Was The Market? The S&P 500 was at 41.73 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 448.76.

What Else Was Going On In The World: In 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was established and Fairchild Semiconductors invented the first microchip. Average monthly rent in the U.S. was $92.

DARPA Money: DARPA, which was originally called the Advanced Research Projects Agency, was created to help the U.S. develop technology to compete with Russia in the Cold War. Russia launched the Sputnik 1 satellite in 1957, and it’s no surprise the U.S. began heavily investing in technology projects shortly thereafter.

Over the years, DARPA funding has played a key role in the development of major new technology. J.C.R. Licklider, who served as ARPA’s head of the Information Processing Techniques Office, played a critical role in the development of the ARPANET in the 1960s. The ARPANET was the first computer network to use the protocol suite TCP/IP, which was later used as the technical basis of the internet.

Sun Microsystems, which was acquired by Oracle Corporation ORCL in 2010, snagged its first major contract from DARPA. Silicon Graphics also notched its first major contract from DARPA.

As of 2019, DARPA had an annual budget of nearly $3 billion. DARPA has more than 200 different programs exploring a number of different science and engineering goals. These projects include cancer research, weapons research, protein design, remote-controlled insects, neural implants and high-productivity computing systems.

A rendering of the DARPA experimental spaceplane. Courtesy photo.