Internet technology has changed the way that we work, communicate, and express ourselves over the past 20 years. Internet history goes back much farther than many people realise, though. The Internet’s origins are in a project proposed by United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) in 1962 called “Net”. Net was designed to create a computer network that would be able to survive a nuclear attack by locating backup nodes throughout the country.
In 1969, Nodes were established in the west coast universities of UCLA and Stanford. The Internet was born from this early work. In 1990, Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). The Web combined hypertext functionality with ease of use through a user-friendly interface. This led to an exponential growth in Internet popularity, making it a mainstream form of communication around the world.
Internet culture has been shaped by many factors including popular websites such as YouTube and Facebook; viral videos that have spread across the Internet with great speed; Internet memes that are used both derisively and humorously; Internet lingo that has become very popular within Internet culture; and Internet activism, which is used to promote or inhibit certain causes.
The Internet has also given rise to new career paths such as Internet celebrities who are Internet personalities with a large social media following. Internet history is influential because it teaches people about what came before modern-day technology existed, but Internet history is not set in stone. Internet History will continue to change as technologies improve and more information becomes available on the Internet.
The Internet has become a part of daily life for many people. People have Internet in their homes, at work and even on mobile phones that they carry around with them everywhere.
People often think the Internet has always been here and is instantly recognized as something all people use today. Unfortunately, this assumption couldn’t be further from the truth.
It didn’t come into existence overnight and it took several different inventions to make it what we know today. This article will explain how these inventors helped create the Internet we know and love today – starting back when networks were still analog and ending with Internet access becoming available almost unlimitedly to everyone across the globe via smartphones and WiFi hotspots.
The Early Telephone (1876 – 1907)
The Internet is often considered the Internet of information, but it all started with the telephone.
“You have to start somewhere!”
It wasn’t until 1876 that Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone (although others had been working on it for many years before him), which was also an invention that involved transferring data through sounds.
Meanwhile, in Germany, inventor Paul Nipkow created the first electromechanical television system – although this didn’t go into commercial production until 1925; he would be recognized today as “the father of television”.
Early Internet (1940s – 1960s)
While Internet History alone could be a course at most Universities around the world, we’ll try Internet History is actually very well documented on Wikipedia , but I’m not going to copy their entire Internet History section into this article!
The Internet started as a network connecting computers together, allowing them to transfer information either within one computer or between different ones. This first Internet was called ARPANET and was funded by the US Department of Defense, through DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). The purpose of having an Internet-like structure for sharing data between different computers was to be able to share large amounts of data among these computers – all at once.
ARPANET kicked off in 1969, with four computers hooked up to each other. Other universities began hooking up their own networks into it over the next few years; Internet History does well to explain everything that happened up until 1989 , when Internet History is easily available for anyone interested in learning more about Internet History.
While Internet Access was available at major universities, Internet was not yet available to the public. The Internet wouldn’t be opened up to the general public until 1991, after nearly 30 years of development by numerous inventors.
To many people, the Internet is a world-wide web of interconnected computer networks that are all based on the Internet Protocol. To others, it is primarily an information superhighway used to gain access to all sorts of digital media for work or play. But what’s the history behind this Internet thing? How did it come about?
The Internet model was envisioned by Leonard Kleinrock through his MIT thesis in 1961. His idea was to connect different computers together so that messages could be transmitted from one machine to another with no central control. This led to him being given funding by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) for research into his theories at UCLA during 1969-70. The first message ever sent over this network was “login” but the Internet as we know it today came about thanks to the Internet Protocol, or IP.
In 1983, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn first published the Internet Protocol (IP) specification in RFC 675. This was a major development which allowed computers all over the world to connect to each other and exchange information with no central server. The chances are that you’re reading this article on an Internet-connected device right now – at home, work, school or even on your mobile phone!
The Internet has exploded in popularity since those early days and it’s hard to imagine what life would be like without it. It may have seemed like a fascinating experiment at first but now we cannot do without it – we depend upon our smartphones and PCs for so much. Internet access is what allows us to communicate through email, share our thoughts and ideas through blogging and social media, access information about anything we need, play video games online with friends, order the latest take-away food, bank online or even shop for groceries!
When you consider how many people in the world do not have Internet access (estimated at over three billion), it makes you realize just how important Internet technology has become to modern life. The Internet may well be one of the most revolutionary technologies in human history.
