Sputnik Crisis
 The Sputnik Crisis was America’s reaction to the launch of Sputnik. While Eisenhower himself wasn’t particularly surprised by the U.S.S.R. launching a satellite, the public was. The public’s reaction was heightened due to the Cold War between the Soviet Union and America. Because of the Cold War, Americans were scared of the launch of the satellite because it would mean that the Soviets have access to missiles that could reach American soil. Not only was the public afraid because of the threat of a missile attack but also because in the American view, America was supposed to be superior to the Soviets in technology. Due to the public’s reaction to the Sputnik launch, a lot of new policies were introduced to America. Two of these polices played an important role into shaping the future of computing. One of them was tasked with civilian operations in space was NASA. The other for military research for space and technology in general was ARPA, which had arguably the most influence to how computing turned out today.
Effects
- In response to Sputnik America created NASA which would then be there arm in the advancement of space exploration. NASA would then contribute a lot to the world of computing.
- Besides NASA, America would also create ARPA which would then probably make the greatest single contribution to how we compute today.
- Outside of computing, in response to Sputnik, America increased funding by a lot for research sciences as well as education reform to breed a new generation of engineers.
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