Paul Baran was born in Poland in 1926. He moved to the United States with his family in 1928. After gaining a degree in electric engineering from Drexel University he became a technician at the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation.
In 1959, during the Cold War, Baran joined the RAND Institute as a researcher. The institute was working on ways to communicate in the event of a nuclear attack. Baran suggested designing a robust communications network using 'redundancy' and 'digital' technology.
The concept of information being passed through a network of computers as packets developed by Baran, was influential in the development of APRANET, which was a predecessor to the internet. A team member of APRA (Advanced Research Projects Agency), Larry Roberts, was interested in Baran’s ideas for a robust network and adopted his network ad packets of information scheme. As a result Baran became a consultant on the APRANET project.
