The History of the Internet

The Internet is a way of life, but it was not like that in earlier times. You may not be able to imagine life without the Internet if you were born later than 1990. By the time you began school, computers were a part of everyday life. Cell phones were in everyone's hands, and it was not uncommon to see a computer in every home. Today, the Internet helps you locate information, communicate with others, handle finances, and even entertain you. If you were not around before the Internet was, here are some questions about where and how it began.

Who Invented the Internet?

The Internet was originally designed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. It began as a simple email and ftp portal that was used to transfer information between various defense research facilities. The concept began in 1964, and by 1969 the first email transfer was completed. Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn created the first TCP/IP in 1974. This is the protocol used today for transfers and what opened the doors for the information highway to take off. There was not a single person involved in the creation of the Internet, there were several.

What Was the First Website?

There were military based sites on the Internet before public ones became available. The first website that anyone could visit was not created until 1990. The site was http://nxoc01.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html. This site was the first HTML website, not Internet site. You can visit the Archive.org site to view a variety of sites from their earlier years. The Internet began archiving sites around 1996. There are millions of them to browse through.

What is the World Wide Web?

The World Wide Web is a large space that spans information across the globe. It is identified as Uniform Resource Locator, otherwise known as URL. The http:// is the resource identifier, while the URL is the FTP protocol. Every page is given a unique address that anyone, anywhere can visit. The World Wide Web is a sub-part of the Internet; they are not one in the same. The World Wide Web was invented by Sir Tim Burners Lee in 1989.

When Did Google Begin?

Larry Page and Sergey Brin collaborated on a search engine while in college together at Stanford in 1996. The original name of the search engine was BackRub. It was designed to help organize the massive amounts of data on the Internet. The approach with their design was to be able to recognize backlinks and sort through the massive amounts of websites that were emerging. The pair decided to change the name of the search engine to Google. They got the funding needed from investors and in 1998 Google arrived on the Internet.

How Has the Internet Evolved?

The Internet has evolved a great deal since it has begun, and it continues to evolve today. In the beginning you had to dial a telephone number and get connected through an external modem. You then had to know the name of the site you wanted to visit in order to find it, as search engines were not highly developed yet. Today you connect through wireless modems, can find any website you want with a simple keyword entered into the search engine of your choice. Whereas once you could only transfer documents across the Internet, today you can transmit images, video, audio, and do it all in real time.

The history of the Internet is fascinating, bringing to light how much detail was involved to create what we see as a simple platform to use. The beginning did not offer user-friendly platforms, and even the earliest versions of Windows operating systems were a struggle to navigate. Today everything is available at a click of the mouse, offers self-explanation, and needs no technical degree to operate. Things have certainly changed, and for the most part, most would say for the better.