The History of the Internet
By: Nilam Panchal
Dr. King
Engr10
10/14/01
Something that many of us now rely on for communication.
Something that the professor can use to instruct the class. Something
that connects the world together. What is this something? It is the
Internet. The Internet has made the world a better place. How did the
Internet start? In this dissertation one will find out about the
history of the Internet.
When one researches on the Internet’s history they usually find
out that RAND Corporation planned the Internet after Russia’s launch of
Sputnik. Actually the plans of the Internet began a little bit earlier
than the 1960s. In 1958, Ike, a nerd, formed Advanced Research
Projects Agency (ARPA) to coordinate All-American technological
research. Then from 1961 to 1961 J.C.R Licklider, Leonard Kleinrock,
and Lawrence Roberts of MIT designed a network that will let different
sorts of computers speak with one another wherever they are. This
network was the Internet.
After the creation of the network all throughout the 60s, the
concept of a decentralized, blast proof, packet-switching network was
worked on by the RAND Corporation, MIT, and UCLA. The National
Physical Laboratory in Britain was the first to test this packet-
switching network in 1968. Shortly ARPA decided to expand this packet-
switching network. In 1969 with the help of AT&T linked UCLA, Stanford
Research Institute, and the University of Utah.
“By the second year of operation, ARPANET’s users had warped the
computer-sharing network into a dedicated, high-speed, federally
subsidized electronic post office” (Sterling). By 1972, the users of
ARPANET were using electronic mail enthusiastically. Throughout the
70s, this network grew because of its decentralized structure, which
allowed unlike computers to communicate.
ARPA’s standard for communication then was NCP, Network Control
Protocol. With time NCP became TCP/IP. TCP, Transmission Control
Protocol, converts messages into packets, and then reassembles them
back into messages at the destination. IP, Internet Protocol, takes
care of addressing the packets. As early as the 1977 others, to link
to ARPANET, were using TCP/IP.
In 1978 Chicago hobbyist, Ward Christensen, wrote a software
program call MODEM. The MODEM, which stands for modulator-demodulator,
allowed computers to be connected by a telephone line. The MODEM
allowed the whole world to use the Internet.
In 1984, National Science Foundation linked newer, faster,
supercomputers, which allowed many government agencies to join on the
Internet. This linkage also allowed others to get on the Internet.
Due to many computers on the net, computers were grouped into domains.
Some of the domains were gov, mil, edu, com, org, and net.
ARPANET expired in 1989, with no one noticing. With this
expiration new advances came. Tim Berners-Lee of CERN in Geneva
invents HTML and names this networking project the World Wide Web. In
1990 the ISP, Internet Service Provider, is born becoming the world’s
first dial up service. Then in 1993, Marc Andreesen’s, browser,
Mosaic, allows the world to easily navigate the World Wide Web.
Finally in 1995, the Internet becomes a commercial entity, free from
the government.
Now in 2001, there are four million people on the Internet. Each
second another person joins the Internet. Forty-two countries are on
the Internet at the moment and a new country is joining the Internet
daily. The Internet has taken over the world. It started off as a
military project to survive a nuclear attack and now it has become the
Emperor of the world.
Bibliography
Ferrell, Keith. “Internet.” World Book Millennium 2000. Vol. 10
Chicago: World Book, 2000.
Borden, Mark. “A brief History of the Net.” Time. 9 Oct. 2001: 34.
Sterling, Bruce. “Short History of the Internet by Bruce Sterling.” 1
Oct. 2001. http://www1.uop.edu/eng/faculty/jking/engr10/int-histroy.html.