Yep. Also NASA. He realized that having one military organization dedicated to pure science - and one civilian organization dedicated to the space race - made a lot more sense than research within the bitter inter-service rivalries that had developed in the US military. And his vision bore fruit in many ways; the Internet was just one of them.
One of his final speeches on the subject:
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
And the cost of all that "blue sky" research was huge - billions of dollars. But where would we be today without it?
