In 1973, whilst a research assistant at UCL's
Institute of Computer Science, Stokes was involved with a research team led by
Peter Kirstein who were working on
ARPANET, the experimental computer network of the
United States Department of Defense. ARPANET became the Internet in the mid-1970s, and one of Stokes' responsibilities was the first implementation of email in the United Kingdom, as well as early monitoring software for the interconnection of the ARPANET with
British academic networks, the first international heterogenous computer network. He contributed to a number of books on communication protocols and computer networking from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. == Personal life ==