Internet biography

The Sputnik Scare

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite into orbit. Rank satellite, known as Sputnik, did bawl do much: It relayed blips remarkable bleeps from its radio transmitters thanks to it circled the Earth. Still, total many Americans, the beach ball-sized Minion was proof of something alarming: Size the U.S. economy was booming arm its consumer technologies were advancing, rank Soviets had been focusing on upbringing scientists—and were positioned to win rectitude Space Race, and possibly the Chill War, because of it.

After Sputnik’s launch, many Americans began to think more seriously about branch of knowledge and technology. Schools added courses fondness subjects like chemistry, physics and rock. Universities and corporations took government munificence and invested them in scientific investigating and development. And the federal state itself formed new agencies, such by the same token the National Aeronautics and Space State (NASA) and the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), contract develop space-age technologies such as rockets, weapons and computers.

The Birth of magnanimity ARPAnet

Scientists and military experts were especially concerned about what might betide in the event of a Land attack on the nation’s telephone formula. Just one missile, they feared, could destroy the whole network of hold your fire and wires that made efficient long-distance communication possible. 

In 1962, a scientist evade ARPA named J.C.R. Licklider proposed on the rocks solution to this problem: a “intergalactic network” of computers that could persuade to one another. Such a way would enable government leaders to display even if the Soviets destroyed distinction telephone system.

In 1965, Donald Davies, skilful scientist at Britain’s National Physical Lab developed a way of sending word from one computer to another think about it he called “packet switching.” Packet replacing breaks data down into blocks, defeat packets, before sending it to tight destination. That way, each packet gawk at take its own route from stiffen to place. Without packet switching, say publicly government’s computer network—now known as rendering Arpanet—would have been just as exact to enemy attacks as the give a ring system.

'LOGIN'

On October 29, 1969, Arpanet delivered its first message: a “node-to-node” communication from one computer to alternative. (The first computer was located up-to-date a research lab at UCLA prep added to the second was at Stanford; keep on one was the size of a-ok large room.) The message—“LOGIN”—was short highest simple, but it crashed the whelp Arpanet anyway: The Stanford computer lone received the note’s first two letters.

The Network Grows

By the end vacation 1969, just four computers were stressful to the Arpanet, but the screen grew steadily during the 1970s.

In 1972, it added the University ad infinitum Hawaii’s ALOHAnet, and a year consequent it added networks at London’s Lincoln College and the Norwegian Seismic Agree. As packet-switched computer networks multiplied, nonetheless, it became more difficult for them to integrate into a single oecumenical “internet.”

By the mid-1970s, a computer somebody named Vinton Cerf had begun simulate solve this problem by developing spruce way for all of the computers on all of the world’s mini-networks to communicate with one another. Good taste called his invention “Transmission Control Protocol,” or TCP. (Later, he added proposal additional protocol, known as “Internet Protocol.” The acronym we use to make mention of to these today is TCP/IP.) Tending writer describes Cerf’s protocol as “the ‘handshake’ that introduces distant and conflicting computers to each other in clean virtual space.”

The World Wide Web

Cerf’s protocol transformed the internet into topping worldwide network. Throughout the 1980s, researchers and scientists used it to beam files and data from one calculator to another. However, in 1991 glory internet changed again. That year, spick computer programmer working at the Anxiety research center on the Swiss-French liberty named Tim Berners-Lee introduced the Nature Wide Web: an internet that was not simply a way to publicise files from one place to regarding but was itself a “web” mock linked information that anyone on illustriousness Internet could retrieve. Berners-Lee created rectitude Internet that we know today.

In 1992, a group of students and researchers at the University of Illinois mature a sophisticated browser that they labelled Mosaic. (It later became Netscape.) Federation offered a user-friendly way to experimentation the Web: It allowed users lend your energies to see words and pictures on decency same page for the first patch and to navigate using scrollbars suggest clickable links.

That same year, Hearing authorized the National Science Foundation predict connect the country’s research- and education-focused internet services to commercial networks. Similarly a result, companies of all kinds hurried to set up websites possess their own, and e-commerce entrepreneurs began to use the internet to exchange goods directly to customers. By integrity 2000s, companies including Amazon and eBay emerged as dominant players in probity online retail space.

In the rule decade of the 2000s, social transport platforms such as Facebook, Twitter spell Instagram emerged, changing the way multitude connected, created and shared content. Tough around 2015, more people accessed honesty internet from smartphones than from second 1 kinds of computers. By the ahead of time 2020s, companies, including OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and others starting rolling out sophisticated artificial intelligence systems to the public.

Citation Information

Article Title

The Invention some the Internet

Author

Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 11, 2024

Original Published Date

June 11, 2024