Anonymity was built into the Internet's design from the days of its progenitor (Arpanet) in the 1960s.

FORBES: Magazine Article

This means he and his buddies were sprigs in their 20s and 30s when they conjured up Arpanet.

FORBES: BOOM INTERRUPTUS

To jog your memory, Roberts fathered the Internet, back when it was called Arpanet and was managed by the U.S. Department of Defense.

FORBES: BOOM INTERRUPTUS

The original ARPAnet, Hoover notes, was really engineered for point-to-point communications.

FORBES: Connect

Back in the early 80s a man by the name of Geoff Goodfellow had an idea: to relay electronic mail from Arpanet to his alphanumeric pager.

ENGADGET: Geoff Goodfellow, early inventor of wireless email, profiled

At the time, the Internet was known as Arpanet, and was used primarily by the government, and there was only one computer store in Santa Monica, Calif.

WSJ: "Disconnect": From Talkies to Texties

The Internet, which first appeared as Arpanet under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Defense in 1969, moved to university labs, where initial problems were solved.

FORBES: Magazine Article

The government funded the Arpanet, the grand-daddy of the modern Internet, and much of the basic research in the U.S. State-supported universities train much of the high-tech workforce.

FORBES: Guess What: The Government Built Your Company!

He published his concept on an Arpanet mailing list in 1982 (he called his piece "Electronic Mail for People on the Move"), and went on to found RadioMail in the early 1990s -- a wireless email service (surprise, surprise).

ENGADGET: Geoff Goodfellow, early inventor of wireless email, profiled

In the mid-90s, ARPANet was transformed from a military safety net to the civilian Internet that has become such an integral part of our lives, bringing with it change not only technological, but societal and epic in scope.

FORBES: The Internet Revolution is the New Industrial Revolution