# Most of DARPA’s outlier output happened before 1972 when it was ARPA [[ARPA became DARPA in 1972 because of the increased scrutiny on military spending both in the government and outside of it]] . Just looking at the [DARPA “best hits” timeline](https://www.darpa.mil/Timeline/index.html) for wildly impactful technologies, the difference before and after 1972 is pretty stark. **Before 1972:** * [[Weather satellites]] * [[Phased array radar]] * Precursor to [[GPS]] * [[Computer mouse]] * [[Arecibo observatory]] * [[Shakey the robot]] - basically kicked off robotics as a field * [[Mother of all demos]] * [[ARPAnet]] * [[Gallium Arsenide]] (that enabled the laser) * [[TCP/IP]] **After 1972:** * [[PAL]] (siri precusor) * [[Big Dog robot]] * [[Autonomous Vehicles]] * Urban Challenge * Miniaturized GPS receivers Some of these are still pretty significant - both autonomous cars and voice technology are arguably very important and haven’t reached their potential yet. Therefore, there are still valuable things to be learned from post-1972 DARPA. ### Related * [[List of DARPA Technologies]] [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Most+of+DARPA’s+outlier+output+happened+before+1972+when+it+was+ARPA) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Most+of+DARPA’s+outlier+output+happened+before+1972+when+it+was+ARPA)