Nearly 50 years ago, computer visionary Robert Taylor helped lay the foundations for what we know today as the internet. Taylor, who had Parkinson's disease, died Thursday at his home in Woodside, Calif., his son Kurt Taylor tells NPR. Like many of his peers who helped build the internet, Bob Taylor, as he was known, wasn't a computer scientist. The University of Texas at Austin graduate had a background in psychology and mathematics. Taylor was inspired by the idea of expanding human interaction using computer technology, Guy Raz noted in an interview profiling Taylor in 2009.

Robert Taylor, who was instrumental in creating the internet and the modern personal computer, has died. Taylor, who had Parkinson's disease, died on Thursday at his home in the San Francisco peninsula community of Woodside, his son, Kurt Taylor, told the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. "Any way you look at it, from kick-starting the internet to launching the personal computer revolution, Bob Taylor was a key architect of our modern world," Leslie Berlin, a historian at the Stanford University Silicon Valley Archives project, told the New York Times. In 1961, Taylor was a project manager for Nasa when he directed funding to Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute, who helped develop the modern computer mouse. Taylor was working for the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency (Arpa) in 1966 when he shepherded the creation of a single computer network to link Arpa-sponsored researchers at companies and institutions around the country.