This Day in History: June 9
June 9, 1986
Supercomputer Center Supports Precursor to Internet
The Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center opened to support the precursor to the modern Internet, the National Science Foundation's NSFNET, which linked five supercomputer centers at Princeton University, Pittsburgh, University of California at San Diego, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Cornell University. Soon, several regional networks developed. Eventually, the government reassigned pieces of the ARPANET to the NSFNET. The NSF allowed commercial use of the Internet for the first time in 1991, and in 1995, it decommissioned the backbone, leaving the Internet a self-supporting industry.