
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was established in 1958, in the wake of the Soviet Union's Sputnik launch the year before. Worried that the U.S. was losing its technological edge to the Soviets, President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the agency to organize the United States' missile and space projects and align them with the goals of the federal government.
Later, DARPA expanded and began looking into other fields of research, like telecommunications and artificial intelligence, and the agency continues to build research projects around novel technology.