The Internet originated in the 1960s as a small network called ARPANET that allowed the US military to communicate secretly during the Cold War. In the 1970s, Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf designed the TCP/IP protocol to allow different networks to interconnect. This became the standard for the Internet in 1980 when it was adopted by the US Department of Defense. By the 1990s, the World Wide Web developed by Tim Berners-Lee brought graphical interfaces and popularity to the global network known today as the Internet.