The document summarizes the early history and development of the internet from the 1950s to the 1990s. It describes how ARPANET, the first network to connect computers across universities, was created in the 1960s and used packet switching to allow for communication between connected computers. ARPANET grew throughout the 1970s and other networks also emerged, but they were not compatible until TCP/IP was adopted in the 1980s as a standard protocol. NSFNET replaced ARPANET as the backbone of the internet in the 1990s as commercial use of the internet expanded.
The document summarizes the early history and development of the internet from the 1950s to the 1990s. It describes how ARPANET, the first network to connect computers across universities, was created in the 1960s and used packet switching to allow for communication between connected computers. ARPANET grew throughout the 1970s and other networks also emerged, but they were not compatible until TCP/IP was adopted in the 1980s as a standard protocol. NSFNET replaced ARPANET as the backbone of the internet in the 1990s as commercial use of the internet expanded.
Original Description:
Science Technology and Society. Background about the “internet”.
The document summarizes the early history and development of the internet from the 1950s to the 1990s. It describes how ARPANET, the first network to connect computers across universities, was created in the 1960s and used packet switching to allow for communication between connected computers. ARPANET grew throughout the 1970s and other networks also emerged, but they were not compatible until TCP/IP was adopted in the 1980s as a standard protocol. NSFNET replaced ARPANET as the backbone of the internet in the 1990s as commercial use of the internet expanded.
The document summarizes the early history and development of the internet from the 1950s to the 1990s. It describes how ARPANET, the first network to connect computers across universities, was created in the 1960s and used packet switching to allow for communication between connected computers. ARPANET grew throughout the 1970s and other networks also emerged, but they were not compatible until TCP/IP was adopted in the 1980s as a standard protocol. NSFNET replaced ARPANET as the backbone of the internet in the 1990s as commercial use of the internet expanded.
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Another early step came in 1950s and 1960s, when colleges started separating their
computer terminals, where some would type their program, from the computer themselves. This made it easy for lots of different people to experiment with the new machines while keeping the circuits and tubes safely away from tinkering hands. It was almost like an early form of today's cloud computing, where a user-friendly computer sends complicated task to better, less accessible computer somewhere else. Except that today's cloud uses internet, and in 1960, there was no internet.
But, people were starting to think about it that time.
The US Department of Defense had recently created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) to keep its technology a step ahead of the Soviets. A computer enthusiast Joseph Licklider helped convince ARPA to fund research into a computer network connecting scientists and engineers throughout the country. A few key colleges agreed to be involved, and ARPA started building the network in 1969, and they called it ARPANET.
It started fairly small, as a sort of messaging service between computers in UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, Stanford University, and University of Utah. But, it was the first network of its kind. And, as ARPANET grew over the next couple of decades, its engineers would add features and solve problems that still shape everything we do online.
One of ARPANET's first big innovation was what's known as packet switching. Through packet switching, computers send messages along the set of wires instead of each getting one. To communicate with each other, they just send a message, called a packet, along the wires. Every packet had a kind of address label: a string of numbers representing the computer where it was headed. The computer where it started would look up the address on a table with all addresses in the network on it, and then send the packet to whatever nearby computer was closest to the destination. The computer had to have updated list of all the other computers' addresses in order to send information.
The network kept getting bigger and bigger, and sometimes computers' addresses might change if they temporarily disconnected from the network, or if the connection stopped working.
So ARPANET's engineers scrapped that system and selected Stanford as the official record keeper of everyone's address in 1973. This quick fix let ARPANET keep growing throughout the seventies, with 60 computers in 1974 and over a hundred in 1977.
Soon, satellites connected California and Hawaii, stretching ARPANET to what had been one of the most isolated places in the world. Then, ARPANET jumped across the pond, extending the network to England and Norway. But by the mid-seventies, ARPANET was not the only network in town. Similar networks were popping up around the world, and some had more computers on them.
But everyone formatted their packets differently, so even though you could connect other networks, it was a real headache. The problem was mostly solved back in 1974, but it took until early 1980s before the ARPANET and other networks started using it. The solution was a set of programs called TCP/IP or Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol, which we still use today. The Transmission Control Protocol was a standard way of formatting packets, so that everyone is speaking the same language.
ARPANET and other networks that were formed the basis of the internet were government- run and government-funded so the businesses and universities using them weren't allowed to have any commercial traffic on the network. The internet was supposed to be for research not for making money. ARPANET administrators were looking to hand off responsibilities for maintaining the internet. ARPANET had long since accomplished its goals, and the Department of Defense wanted to move on.
The National Science Foundation's huge network, NSFNET, seemed to be the best candidate. It started in 1986 and it grew quickly after connecting to the ARPANET. After less than a year it needed major upgrades to handle all the new traffic. In 1990, NSFNET officially replaced ARPANET as the backbone of the internet and its more than half million users.
In the 1989, we got the first ISPs or Internet Service Providers. Due to the growing demand of people for internet, more ISPs were established in the next few years.
Tim Berners-Lee with the help of his colleague Robert Cailliau started working on the Worldwide Web. Instead of each file being like its own little isolated branch, any document or file could direct people to other related files so you could easily go from one to the next, and the tool for this is the hypertext. Tim Berners-Lee used the hypertext to navigate Worldwide Web with hyperlinks connect different web pages, and it was made public in 1993. He was the reason why most of the website we go to have "http//:www." HTTP means Hypertext Transfer Protocol.
In 1995, NSFNET shutdown for good and handed over everything to ISPs.
Soon, a whole bunch of different programs popped up for accessing these new hyperlinked webs. Each is different depending upon what their users wanted. These are the ancestors of whatever you are using today, like Netscape Navigator, it was first release in 1994 and the code for it was eventually incorporated into Firefox.
The growing demand for the internet leads to its innovation. Now, we have wireless internet connection, and the use of it seems limitless. People use internet to find information, to be educated, to solve problems, to communicate and socialize, to play games, to advertise, to buy things, and whatnot.
