In the mid- to late 1960s the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) created a small network, ARPANET, which was intended to promote the sharing of computers among researchers in the United States. In 1969, ARPANET connected the first four university participants, and researchers on those campuses created the first hosts of the ARPANET.
Over time, this process of linking computers evolved into the Internet. Importantly, much of the work of creating the standards that drove the early creation of the Internet was led by the private sector, both commercial and academic. Finally, the federal government is reported to be an active user of the Internet to sell its products, including financial products.