The Real Novelty of the ARPANET 07 Feb 2021 If you run an image search for the word âARPANET,â you will find lots of maps showing how the government research network expanded steadily across the country throughout the late â60s and early â70s. Iâm guessing that most people reading or hearing about the ARPANET for the first time encounter one of these maps. Obviously, the maps are interestingâitâs hard to believe that there were once so few networked computers that their locations could all be conveyed with what is really pretty lo-fi cartography. (Weâre talking 1960s overhead projector