The internet's history can be
traced back to ARPANET - which
was started by the US Dept. of
Defense for research into
networking sometime in 1969.
Many people wanted to put their
ideas into the standards for
communication between the
computers that made up this
network, so a system was
devised for putting forward ideas.
Basically you wrote your ideas in
a paper called a 'Request for
Comments' (RFC for short), and
let everyone else read it. People
commented on and improved your
ideas in new RFCs. The first RFC
(RFC0001) was written on April
7th, 1969. There are now well
over 2000 RFCs, describing every
aspect of how the internet
functions.
The first Interface Message
Processor (IMP) was plugged in
and switched on in Len Kleinrock's
lab at UCLA on 2nd September
1969, forming the beginning of an
real network to test the ideas.
ARPAnet was opened to non-
military users later in the 1970s,
and early takers were the big
universities - although at this
stage it resembled nothing like the
internet we know today.
International connections (i.e.
outside America) started in 1972,
but the internet was still just a
way for computers to talk to each
other and for research into
networking, there was no World-
Wide-Web and no email as we
now know it.
It wasn't until the early to mid
1980s that the services we now
use most on the internet started
appearing. The concept of 'domain
names', things like 'microsoft.com',
and special Domain Name
Servers' wasn't even introduced
until 1984 - before that all the
computers were just addressed by
their IP addresses (numbers). Most
protocols used for email and other
services appeared after this -
although email itself had been
around much longer the way it
was sent between institutions
was less standardized.
The part of the internet most
people are probably most familiar
with is the World-Wide-Web. This
is a collection of hyperlinked
pages of information distributed
over the internet via a network
protocol called HTTP (hyper-text-
transfer-protocol). This was
invented by Tim Berners-Lee in
1989. He was a physicist working
at CERN, the European Particle
Physics Laboratory, and wanted a
way for physicists to share
information about their research -
the World-Wide-Web was his
solution. So the web was started,
although at this time it was text-
only. Graphics came later with a
browser called NCSA Mosaic. Both
Microsoft's Internet Explorer and
Netscape were originally based on
NCSA Mosaic.
The graphical interface opened up
the internet to novice users and in
1993 its use exploded as people
were allowed to 'dial-in' to the
internet using their computer at
home and a modem to ring up an
'Internet Service Provider' (ISP) to
get their connection to this (now
huge) network. Before this the
only computers connected were at
Universities and other large
organisations that could afford to
hire cables between each other to
transfer the data over - but now
anyone could use the internet and
it evolved into the 'Information
Superhighway' that we know and
(possibly) love today.