Comment by jacobgold

There were famously government and university programs that played important early roles too. But it was largely people working for companies that actually built these systems.

What organizations do you think created the switches, routers, servers, software, fiber optic backbones? Who created the new protocols?

It was companies like AT&T/Bell Labs, Cisco, 3Com, Sun, UUNET, Netscape, AOL, the major telecoms, and a thousand other companies we don't remember.

Something like 1% inspiration from academia and government, and 99% perspiration by people working inside companies.