In today’s world we use the internet to send e-mails, make calls, research information and discuss things we take an interest in. Even our bank accounts are going virtual. What we take for granted today was unimaginable forty years ago.

 

The Internet is considered to be one of the greatest telecommunicational advances since the telephone. From the moment people have connected computers to one another we have been using them to talk to one another. The Internet has been around for a lot longer than many people believe.

 

The Internet has it’s foundations in the packet-switching networks that came about in the 1960s. Transmitted data was broken up into smaller forms of data, sent to its destination and it was reassembled on the other side. This meant that one signal could be sent to multiple users and an interrupted packet could be re-sent without loss of transmission. Computers at that time were huge structures and often took up whole rooms.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

Earlier packet-switching networks were first set up in Europe and a similar system was designed in America in the late 1960s. The internet as it’s known today came into being in 1969 with the setting up of Arpanet (Advances Research Projects Agency Networks) by the US Defence Department. Arpanet was an attempt to help the US military forces to communicate with each other after the Cold War without being detected. They wanted to distribute information between computers that were geographically dispersed from one another. It aimed to have a military command and control centre that could withstand a nuclear attack. That meant that if one part of the system was attacked or destroyed the rest of the system would still be able to respond. However, if the mainframe of the system was destroyed the whole system would be destroyed. Four computers were connected in 1969 creating the first source of the internet – UCLA, Stanford Research Institution, UC Santa Barbara and the University of Utah. These were the first hosts on what later would become the Internet.

 

The network was designed in part to provide a communications network that would work even if some of the sites were destroyed by nuclear attack. If the most direct route was not available, routers would direct traffic around the network via alternative routes. The first message that was attempted to be sent between one computer and another was simply Log-In. However, the connection apparently crashed on the letter ‘g’. This was the start of the Internet. Over time more people hopped on the train and the network kept getting bigger and bigger.

 

The earlier internet was used by computer experts, scientists and engineers. It was a complicated process and the user had to learn how to use a very complex system.

 

E-mail became part of Arpanet in 1972. It was developed by Roy Tomlinson and he picked the ‘@’ symbol to link the username and address. The first international and intercontinental connection was made with the University College of London in Britain in 1973. During the same year, e-mail accounted for 75% of all of all Arpanet activity.

 

1974 was an important year in the development of the network. A proposal was published to connect Arpa-like networks together in an ‘inter-network’, where there would be no central control and it would work around an open protocol (transmission control protocol which would eventually become TCP/IP). This allowed for more types of machines to communicate with each other. This proposal also contained the first published reference to the word ‘internet’.

 

More technological advances were made as the 1970s progressed. E-mail was growing in popularity all the time and in 1975, the first modern e-mail programme was developed by John Vittal in the University of Southern California. This programme was called MSG and included the functionalities of ‘Reply’ and ‘Forward’. 1977 was also an important year as the first PC modem was created by Dennis Hayes and Dale Heatherington. Also in 1978 the first ‘spam’ e-mail was sent by Gary Thuerk to 400 users of Arpanet advertising his DEC’s new range of mini-computers.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

With the introduction of PCs (personal computers) in the late 1970s brought a new audience to the Internet that was rapidly developing. In 1979 two graduate students developed the bulletin-board system Usenet. Usenet was an internet based discussion system that created a network between people with dial-up modems. For the first time people from around the world were able to discuss the same topic by posting public messages which were categorised by newsgroups. By this time all the main universities in America were connected to the network and used it to exchange data and educational resources. Usenet contributed a lot to the growth of the Internet. It helped the growth of information sharing and discussion which are fundamental features of the Internet today.

 

From 1983 onwards every computer that was connected to Arpanet was required to use TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol). This eventually became the core of the Internet. TCP/IP was created in order to connect more and more computers together so they could communicate with each other. TCP breaks data into packets and transmits it. IP is a unique address for any computer which is connected to the Internet, for example 137.43.1.18. The TCP/IP communications standard defines data transfer on the Internet to this day.

 

In 1984 the Domain Name System (DNS) came into being along with the first Domain Name Servers. It aimed to make internet addresses more human friendly and easier to remember in comparison to the numerical IP addresses. DNS made it possible for internet users to type in an easy to remember domain and this was then automatically converted to the IP address. Dr. Jon Postel proposed the idea for domains such as .com, .org, .gov, .edu and .mil.

 

A form of Protocol war began in 1986. European countries at the time were using the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) but the United States were using the Internet/Arpanet protocol. The internet eventually won over and there were many reasons for this. The involvement of national bodies meant OSI could be slower to work with while the internet protocols were a lot easier to implement. In 1984 there were 1,000 internet protocols, in 1986 there were 6,000 and by 1987 there was a massive increase to 30,000 internet protocols. The internet protocols also gained critical mass when many networks had switched over to them towards the late 1980s the early 1990s. This was the backdrop to the internet explosion of the 1990s.

 

It was not until 1991 that the World Wide Web as it’s known today came into being. It was developed and introduced by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Caillau. The original proposal for the World Wide Web was in 1989 and it was firstly called ‘Mesh’. Berners-Lee saw the need for a standard linked information system which would be accessible by a range of different computers in use. The World Wide Web protocols were finished by 1990 and it was in 1991 that the first web page was created. The first web page, much like the first e-mail, explained what its purpose was. Also in the same year the MP3 file format was accepted as the standard. MP3 files were highly compressed and would go on to become a popular file format to share music through the internet. 1991 also saw the development of the first webcam in Cambridge University.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

The World Wide Web grew and advanced quickly as the 1990s progressed. The first widely used web browser, Mosaic was launched in 1993. Although it was not the first web browser it was the first web browser to be used by non-experts. As soon as it was linked to PCs and Macs it created a huge surge in internet usage. Mosaic’s competitor Netscape Navigator was released a year later in 1994.

 

As the years progressed services were founded for domain registration and more and more web pages began to appear with a lot of them running on very basic HTML. The World Wide Web had a massive 634% annual growth rate. Even at this time there were many dangerous viruses and bugs. The White House and the United Nations went online and they were followed by the Vatican and other important organisations. Major businesses such as eBay (originally called Echo Bay) and Amazon.com began setting up on the Internet.

 

In 1996 the first webmail service, Hotmail, was launched. Two years later Google! was set up which revolutionised the way people searched for information on the Internet. 1998 also saw the start of mainstream file sharing over the internet with the launch of Napster. 1998 was also the year that the first major news story broke over the internet when it was revealed that US President Bill Clinton had an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

 

In the last 10 years the World Wide Web has grown at an astonishing rate. It is now hard to imagine a world without the internet. Technology has improved greatly and there is greater access than ever to the Internet. The Internet is considered an important tool in education, business and entertainment. There are now billions of web pages online with thousands more being added every hour.

 

2004 saw the growth of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 refers to websites that are highly interactive and user-driven. There has been a huge growth in Internet usage, new applications and the way we use the Internet. The last decade has seen the launch and huge growth of Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter amongst others. The World Wide Web is now an important social tool which is seen in the popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook. Facebook was originally just open to US college students but in 2006 it was opened to everyone and has seen a surge in growth in the past few years. The last three or four years have also seen the popularity of watching television shows online. The revolution has been led by the BBC, Channel 4 and US broadcasters such as ABC, NBC and Fox.

 

The Internet played a huge role in the US Presidential Election in 2008 with candidates such as Hilary Clinton launching their campaigns online. It was a key tool for Barack Obama who used the Internet to build a huge network of small donors which contributed to his record $600 million funds. He also had millions of supporters on Facebook.#p#分頁標題#e#

 

However, the growth of the Internet has not been without its problems. Privacy issues are one of the major problems. Information shared online is often not safe due to bugs, viruses, cookies etc. Online fraud is common where’s someone’s credit card details are stolen. It is possible to trace user’s interactions i.e. what pages they have visited, when and links from one page to another. Images online can also breach privacy and there has been much controversy over programmes such as Google Street View.

 

The Internet has gone a long way since its roots in the 1960s. It has grown into a mighty modern day force that is constantly growing and expanding. The Internet has a huge influence on our every day lives especially the younger generations in the Western World. There isn’t much that is done in today’s modern world that doesn’t involve the internet somewhere along the way. The wide usage and availability of the World Wide Web means that it is never further away than the touch of a fingertip. This is especially true due to the now widespread Internet access using mobile phones. Websites such as Google, Facebook, Hotmail, YouTube and Wikipedia are part of our everyday lives without us even realising it. It is amazing to think the roots of the Internet today can be traced back to packet-switching and Arpanet. The growth, change and development of the Internet over the last 40 years is extraordinary and it will no doubt grow to an even larger scale in the years and decades ahead.

 

Sources

 Griffiths, Richard T. History of the Internet, Internet for Historians (and just about everyone else) http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/history/ivh/frame_theorie.html

 

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet

 

 Howe, Walt. A brief history of the Internet. http://www.walthowe.com/navnet/history.html

 

 A brief history of the Internet. http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml

 

 History of the Internet http://www.historyofthings.com/history-of-the-internet

 

 History of the Internet in a Nutshell

 

http://sixrevisions.com/resources/the-history-of-the-internet-in-a-nutshell/

 

 A people's history of the internet: from Arpanet in 1969 to today http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/interactive/2009/oct/23/internet-arpanet