from Stephen Barr, for The Washington Post
Small and secretive, DARPA has compiled a number of impressive achievements in the past 50 years. It pulled together researchers who created the blueprint for the Internet. It sponsored the inventor of the computer mouse (the first was carved from wood and had one button).
It developed the Saturn rocket engine program that allowed the nation to go to the moon. It came up with the technologies that have made possible stealth fighters and bombers, precision munitions and the pilot-less Predator planes used in Iraq and Afghanistan.
