The Invention of the Internet
What is the internet:
It is the defining technology of our time. It enables millions of people with computers to communicate and connect. It’s also the world’s largest marketplace and information on almost anything and everything is available here.
Importance
Importance: Can be used as a tool of war to manage material and manpower (example: United Nations use of it in war against Saddam Hussain and Gulf War). It is a vital information link and helps carry uncensored news. Major communications tool, and gives instant access to things happening everywhere. Nobody controls the internet.
ARPANET
The idea behind the internet was initially envisioned by J. C. R. Licklider (his vision was that computers would allow us to communicate better, which would be better in sharing information among people). The firsts computers were the size of a room and were never meant for communications. In 1966 Bob Tylor of A.R.P.A(Advanced Research Projects Agency) had an idea, and wanted to build a network, or a single terminal for more than 1 computers to talk to each other. At the time all computers had their own terminal. He recruited Larry Roberts for this job(he had built the world’s first experimental connection between two computers at MIT lab).
Larry Roberts believed he could use packet switching to transfer information, he asked 140 companies including At&t and IBM to bid on the project but it was refused, as they believed it wouldn’t work. But a small company at the time: BBN wasn’t sure either but they decided to try. They faced numerous problems such as:
- how to stop the packets from circulating forever
- when to stop at their destination
- stop them from overflowing
- how to find out where the problems were occurring and many other technical difficulties
Initially there were only 4 mainframe computers hooked into the network, but by April 1971 there were 18 connected to the network (ARPANET).
Application Softwares
At the time there wasn’t much to do on the ARPANET beyond transferring data files among the members. The first application that changed information sharing and also made the internet more important and useful was email. The internet was not owned by anyone and had a tradition of sharing knowledge which allowed people to add to/ find mistakes and bugs and fix them; the rate at which new functionality could be added was very high. On June 9th 1992, the congress passed a bill taking the internet out of the hands of the government and into the public, and was soon signed into law. This unleashed a lot of commercial competition and progress.
The internet started growing on itself and the World Wide Web(www) was created which allowed users to easily navigate and find what they wanted. Although it was more accessible because of the www, an user friendly software called Mosaic was made to browse the www. The number of users skyrocketed as this allowed people to browse the internet and had a more visual effect. The internet is developing and advancing every other day.