The Internet: History and Timeline

A network is a collection of linked computers that may communicate with one another
via data transmission. A social circle is a group of people who all know one another, routinely
communicate information, and collaborate on activities. A computer network is quite similar to a
social circle. This activity is also categorized as a Communication Network activity, the based
foundation of the Internet.

What is Internet?
The Internet, sometimes known as "the Net," is a global system of computer networks. It
is a network of networks that allows users at any one computer to obtain information from any
other computer with permission (and sometimes talk directly to users at other computers). It was
initially known as the ARPANET and was created by the Advanced Research Projects Agency
(ARPA) of the United States government in 1969.
The original plan was to build a network that would enable users of research computers at
different universities to "speak" to one another. Because messages could be routed or diverted in
more than one direction, one advantage of the ARPAnet design was that the network could
continue to operate even if some of its components were destroyed in the case of a military
attack or other tragedy.
Today, hundreds of millions of people worldwide have access to the Internet, which is a
public, cooperative, and self-sustaining resource. It is widely utilized as the main way that people
consume information, and through social media and content sharing, it has driven the
development and expansion of its own social ecosystem. E-commerce, or online buying, has
grown to be one of the most popular uses of the Internet.

How does internet work?

A global computer network called the internet transmits many types of data and media
between linked devices. It functions by utilizing a packet-routing network that adheres to
Transport Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP) (TCP)
Regardless of the device that is used or the location where it is been used, TCP and IP
work together to ensure dependable and constant data transfer over the internet.
Data is conveyed in messages and packets when it is transferred over the internet. A
message is a piece of data delivered over the internet, however before a message is sent, it is
divided up into smaller pieces called packets.
 Using Transport Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), these messages and
packets move between sources (TCP). Information is delivered from one computer to another
through an internet connection according to a protocol called IP.
The IP system receives further instructions on how the data should be transferred using a
numerical address (IP Address).
With IP and the Transport Control Protocol (TCP), data transfer is dependable and
efficient. This ensures that there are no packet losses, that packets are reassembled in the correct
order, and that there are no delays that compromise the quality of the data.

Internet’s History and Timeline

The Internet has revolutionized the computer and communications world like nothing
before. The invention of the telegraph, telephone, radio, and computer set the stage for this
unprecedented integration of capabilities. The timeline shows traces of development of the
Internet from its first forms to the cutting-edge devices we use today for browsing, gaming, and
streaming entertainment. The following are notable Internet-related historical events.

Early modes of Long-Distance Communication

3000BC: Egypt started utilizing homing pigeons for pigeon posts taking use of this bird's unique
ability to navigate when separated from its nest thanks to a highly developed sense of direction.
2400 BC: Courier networks in Egypt
550 BC: Postal service invented in Persia.
150 BC: The Greek historian Polybius created a more sophisticated system of alphabetical
smoke signals that transformed Greek alphabetic symbols into numeric characters. It made it
possible to signal messages simply by holding sets of torches in pairs. The smoke signal is one of
the oldest forms of long-distance communication. It is a form of visual communication used over
a long distance.

The Internet: Early Innovation

1837: Samuel Morse, one of the inventors of the telegraph invented the Morse code, a method
used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different
signal durations, called dots and dashes, or dits and dahs. Revolutionized human
(tele)communications.
1847: The first successful underwater cable utilizing gutta percha insulation was built across the
Rhine between Deutz and Cologne by William Siemens, a Prussian army commander at the time.
It is a submarine communications cable that transmits data over long distances of waterways by
being buried in the seabed between land-based stations.
1850: Direct, immediate communication across the Atlantic was made possible by transatlantic
cable. Transatlantic telegraph cables were underwater telegraph wires that crossed the Atlantic
Ocean.
1854: The first transatlantic telegraph wire was built by the Atlantic Telegraph Company under
the direction of Cyrus West Field. The work was started in 1854 and finished in 1858. The cable
only worked for three weeks, but it was the first effort of its kind to produce useful results.
1876: The telephone was created by Alexander Graham Bell. The current foundation of Internet
connections is telephone exchanges. Nowadays, Computer connectivity over the telephone
network is made possible by modems, which perform Digital to Audio conversions.
1885: AT&T formed. Bell and Hubbard founded the American Telephone and Telegraph
Company, which later bought the Bell Telephone Company and took over as the leading
telephone provider in the US.
1900: Electrical telegraphy was used to create a global network with a global reach. the initial
international communications network.
1927: The first transatlantic phone call was made in official capacity. Walter S. Gifford, the
president of AT&T in the United States, and Sir Evelyn P. Murray, the head of the British
General Post Office, spoke on the phone.
1934: Paul Otlet presented the idea of the radiating library. Several people view him as the
founding figure of information science. In this Radiated Library fantasy, people would call a
fantastic library and ask for information. For what Otlet named the Televised Book, librarians
would extract the data and transmit the pages as TV signals. In order to display multiple books,
he also advised segmenting the screen, which is equivalent to opening many internet tabs or
windows.

Political Events and the Creation of Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)
1957: Launch of the Sputnik by the USSR marks the beginning of international
telecommunications and the first artificial Earth satellite. It brought about fresh advances in
politics, the military, technology, and science. It also enhanced communication between nations.
In response, the US establishes its leadership position in science and technology relevant to the
military by establishing the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within the Department
of Defense (DoD). Today, satellites are crucial to the transmission of many kinds of data.
1958: Researchers at Bell Labs create the modem (modulator demodulator), which transforms
digital impulses into electrical (analog) signals and back again to enable computer
communication. In response to the launch of Sputnik, the US government establishes the
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Its goal was to design and carry out research and
development initiatives to push the boundaries of science and technology in order to go far
beyond immediate military needs.
1961: Leonard Kleinrock invented the packet-switching idea in his PhD dissertation at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Packet switching is a digital networking
communication technique that divides all transmitted data into appropriately sized units, or
packets, and sends them over a shared medium with other concurrent communication sessions.
By enabling the technological convergence of numerous applications running on the same
network, packet switching improves the efficiency and robustness of networks.

Packet-Switching is a Key
1962: PS (packet switching) networks were created. Internet relies heavily on packets to
transport data. For the highest level of security in network information transfer, the military is
the origin (no single outage point). Data is broken up into teeny packets that may travel by
several paths to their destination making it impossible to listen in on messages. There are other
routes accessible; if one route fails, a different one may be taken. Networks can endure extensive
damage (Nuclear attack - This was the time of the Cold War)
1965: Roberts uses a phone line to connect computers. At the MIT Lincoln Lab, packet
switching technology is used to connect two computers. To establish the first wide-area network
(WAN) link between a computer in Massachusetts and a computer in California using long-
distance dial-up, Lawrence Roberts (MIT) and Thomas Marill are awarded an ARPA contract.

The ARPAnet and the Birth of Modern Internet

1966: Robert Taylor, who led ARPA's computer research initiative, started the project that would
become the ARPAnet, the forerunner of the modern Internet. To carry out the networking test
and create the first ARPAnet plan, Lawrence Roberts joins ARPA.
1967: Roberts publishes vision of ARPANET
1968: The Interface Message Processors contract for ARPA is given to Bolt Beranek and
Newman, Inc. (BBN). In order to be the first node, UCLA creates host-level protocols for the
ARPAnet.
1969: Birth of the internet. The BBN installed first. The University of California in Los Angeles,
SRI (at Stanford), University of California at Santa Barbara, and University of Utah are the four
nodes that make up the physical Interface Message Processor (IMP) network. On the other hand,
Charley Kline at UCLA, working under the direction of Professor Leonard Kleinrock, sends the
first data packets across networked computers. The system crashed after entering the letter G for
"Login," resulting in the first message, "LO." The second effort was effective.
1970: Peter Kirstein of University College London starts the first European ARPAnet.
1971: People now can communicate over a network. The invention of email took place which
allowed for the transmission of communications through a distributed network.
1972: Computer connections are more open and simpler. 40 machines participated in the first
public ARPANET demonstration. The email program was created by Ray Tomlinson of BBN to
convey messages over a distributed network. To distinguish between local and international
emails, the "@" symbol is selected from the punctuation keys on Tomlinson's Model 33
Teletype, and "user@host" becomes the accepted email format. By connecting 20 different
computers, Robert Kahn gives the public its first public demonstration of the ARPAnet. Jon
Postel contributes to the development of the initial Internet address registry, afterwards known as
the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). In addition to other essential Internet
operations, IP addresses are administered by this. The French project to create CYCLADES,
their version of the ARPAnet, is led by Louis Pouzin.
1973: Global networking starts happening. University College London (England) establishes the
first international connection to the ARPAnet using NORSAR (Norway). "Internet" is founded
by Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn. A team led by Vint Cerf (Stanford) and Robert Kahn starts work
on what will eventually become the TCP/IP protocol (DARPA). The new protocol will enable
interconnection and communication between various computer networks.
1974: Once the internet was established, packets were used for data transfer. Lawrence Roberts
helps Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) develop Telenet, the first public packet data service or
internet service provider (ISP), a commercial counterpart of ARPAnet, specified by the
Transmission Control Program (TCP). Intercommunication over packet networks serves as the
foundation for internet communication.
1976: On her first email, Queen Elizabeth II pushes the "send" button. At&T Bell Laboratories
created UUCP (Unix-to-Unix CoPy), which is distributed with UNIX. Universities and research
institutions primarily used UNIX, and they still do. Now, these devices could "speak" to each
other across a network.
1977: E-mail takes off, Internet becomes a reality. Internet usage increases as e-mail gains
popularity. More than 100 computer science researchers use THEORYNET for email (using a
locally developed E-mail system and TELENET for access to server).
1979: News Groups born. USENET forms to host news and discussion groups.
1981: The Computer Science Network (CSNET), which offers networking services to university
computer scientists without access to ARPANET, was created with funding from the National
Science Foundation (NSF). Later, CSNET is renamed to the Computing and Science Network.
1982: TCP/IP defines future communication. The set of protocols known as TCP/IP, which
consists of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), became the protocol
for the ARPANET. As a result, connected TCP/IP internets are the basic definition of the
Internet. The Internet's default protocol is still TCP/IP. The first Internet connection in Asia is
created by Kilnam Chon, a professor at Keio University in Japan. His groundbreaking effort
motivates others to support the Internet's regional expansion.
1983: Internet gets bigger. Paul Mockapetris Invents Domain Name System (DNS). The well-
known .edu, .gov, .com,.mil, .org, .net, and.int systems are established by the Domain Name
System (DNS) for identifying websites. Compared to the former designation for websites, such
as 123.456.789.10, this is simpler to remember.
1984: The Internet keeps expanding. In Japan, The Japanese University UNIX Network
(JUNET), the first inter-university network, is created by Dr. Jun Murai, who is referred to as the
"father of the Internet in Japan." On the other hand, William Gibson, author of "Neuromancer,"
is the first to use the word "cyberspace." The first email arrives in Germany from the U.S. on
August 3, 1984. It welcomes you to CSNET.
1985: The first registered domain is Symbolics.com, the website for the Massachusetts-based
Symbolics Computer Corp.
1986: Power of Internet realized. With 56,000 bits per second, the speed of a standard dial-up
modem, the National Science Foundation's NSFNET connects online to associated
supercomputer facilities.
1987: Almost 20,000 hosts are present on the Internet. Internet commercialization has begun
where Cisco releases their initial router.
1989: Large growth in Internet. The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) establishes the first relays
between a commercial electronic mail provider and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
and Internet Research Task Force (IRTF).
1990: ARPANET ceases to exist. HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is created by Tim
Berners-Lee, a researcher at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. This
technology still has a significant influence on how we use and perceive the Internet. The World
goes online (world.std.com), marking it the first company to offer dial-up Internet access for a
fee.
1991: Modernization Begins. CERN introduces the World Wide Web (WWW) to the public.
1992: The Internet is changing due to multimedia, and the number of hosts has surpassed 1
million with 4,00 news groups. The initial audio and video content is made available online. Jean
Armour Polly's term "surfing the Internet" has gained popularity.
1993: The White House and the UN go online, and there are now 600 websites.
1994: Banks and shopping centers are now available online. Birth of Netscape Communications.
A Web browser for Windows 95 is produced by Microsoft.
1995: Commercialization is quickly progressing. CompuServe, America Online and Prodigy
began to provide Internet access. Launch of eBay, Craigslist, and Amazon.com.
1996: The battle for supremacy in the browser market, notably between Microsoft and Netscape,
intensifies. New releases are now made quarterly with the aid of Internet users eager to test
upcoming (beta) versions as a result of the WWW browser war, which is principally contested
between Netscape and Microsoft.
1998: The invention of the Google search engine by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, transforms how
people interact with the Internet.
2000: Dot-com bubble relaxes. The fragility of the Internet is highlighted by a massive denial of
service attack that targets websites like Yahoo! and eBay. Time Warner and AOL merge.
2001: Wikipedia is started by Jimmy Wales. There are 500,000 users of the Internet. Napster, a
peer-to-peer file-sharing program, is shut down by a federal judge who rules that it must first
figure out how to prevent users from sharing content that is protected by copyright before it can
reopen.
2003: In barely ten minutes, the SQL Slammer worm, a particular kind of computer virus, spread
around the globe. Meanwhile, the Safari web browser, Myspace, and Skype make their debuts.
2004: The emergence of social networking coincides with the launch of Facebook online and the
Mozilla Firefox web browser is introduced.
2005: YouTube launches.
2009: The Internet marks its 40th anniversary.
2010: By 2010, there are over 450 million Chinese Internet users.
2011: Live streaming of Will and Kate’s wedding is the biggest event ever watched on the
Internet.

Notable Internet Pioneers

Vannevar Bush - Founded the U.S. military/university research
collaboration that subsequently led to the creation of the ARPANET. In
addition, he published the first imaginative account of the prospective
applications of information technology, which served as inspiration for
many Internet pioneers.

Claude Shannon - The Father of Modern Information Theory. Conceived

the notion that 1s and 0s may be used to represent all information. He
developed the idea of data transmission in BITS per second by designating
these basic units as BITS. His 1936 master's thesis, "A Symbolic Analysis
of Relay and Switching Circuits," which offered mathematical methods for
constructing a network of switches and relays to achieve a certain logical
purpose, such as a combination lock, subsequently earned him a Nobel
Prize.
J. C. R. Licklider - The IPTO was introduced to the concept of a global
network by Joseph Carl Robnett "Lick" Licklider, who also encouraged his
successors to build the ARPANET in order to carry out his vision.
Additionally, he created the theories that gave rise to the concept of the
“Netizen”.
Paul Baran - Paul Baran created the field of packet switching networks
while conducting research at the venerable RAND corporation.

Ted Nelson - His largest endeavor, Xanadu, was intended to be a global

electronic publication network that would have served as a form of public
library. He is credited with inventing the word "hypertext," and he is seen as
somewhat of a rebel, defying authority, and tradition. Some have described
him as one of the "most significant contrarians in the history of the
information era".

Leonard Kleinrock - One of the forerunners of digital network

communications, Leonard Kleinrock was responsible for the development of
the first ARPANET. A team at Kleinrock's NMC connected one of their
SDS Sigma 7 computers to an Interface Message Processor on a momentous
day in early September 1969, making it the first node on the ARPANET and
the first computer to ever connect to the Internet.
Lawrence Roberts - The overall system design was spearheaded by
Lawrence Roberts, the ARPANET program manager. Ivan Sutherland, the
IPTO's director, awarded Roberts a contract in February 1965 to create a
computer network. Thomas Marill, who had also been motivated by
Licklider, was given a contract by Roberts in July to program the network.
One of the first digital network communications ever took place in October
1965 between the TX-2 computer at Lincoln Laboratories and the Q32
computer at their SDC facility.
Steve Crocker - Expert in both the Internet and computer security.
Developed an ISP with a focus on the integration of web-based services for
small and medium-sized businesses, also called as Executive DSL, LLC.
 Jon Postel – The head of ISI's division for computer networks. About 10
projects, including the Routing Arbiter sponsored by the NSF and projects
in Active Networks, Middleware, Security, Distributed Systems, and High-
Speed Networking sponsored by DARPA, are being worked on by the
division's 70 employees. For many years throughout the early years of the
Internet, Jon was widely known as the "policeman of Internet Standards."
Vinton Cerf - Co-creator of the TCP/IP networking protocol. In DARPA, Cerf worked on a
number of intriguing networking initiatives, such as the Packet Satellite
Network and the Packet Radio Net (PRNET) (SATNET). He collaborated
with Bob Kahn as the principal investigator on a project to create the
ARPANET's upcoming networking protocol in the spring of 1973. They
made the ideal combination to develop what became TCP/IP because Kahn
had experience with the Interface Message Processor and Cerf had
knowledge with the Network Control Protocol.

Robert Kahn - Co-creator of the TCP/IP networking protocol. In order to

work on networking technologies, Kahn was hired by Lawrence Roberts at
the IPTO in 1972. In October of that year, he gave a demonstration of an
ARPANET network connecting 40 different computers at the International
Computer Communication Conference, making the network well known to
people all over the world for the first time. Kahn then started working on
creating a common open-architecture network model so that any computer
may communicate with any other without regard to the specific hardware
and software setup. Network Connectivity, Distribution, Error Recovery, and Black Box Design
were his four objectives for the TCP design.
Christian Huitema - Began working for Microsoft as an "architect" in the
"Windows Networking & Communications" division. The team is in charge
of developing all of Windows' networking features, such as IPv6, Real-Time
Communication, and Universal Plug & Play (UPnP). He worked on Internet
Quality of Service and Internet Telephony while serving as head scientist
and a Telcordia Fellow in Telcordia's Internet Architecture Research
laboratory before joining Microsoft. The development of the "Call Agent
Architecture," which permits very large-scale setup, was made possible by
the work on Internet Telephony, bringing it into the mainstream of
telecommunications. Measurement of the extent and caliber of the Internet was the focus of his
individual work on quality of service.
Brian Carpenter – Developed process control systems at CERN in Geneva
from 1975 to 1985, taught computer science at Massey University in New
Zealand, and served as the group leader for communications systems at
CERN from 1985 to 1998. He relocated to an IBM software development
group at Hursley Park, UK, where it appears that he primarily pursues IETF/IAB activities while
also supporting IBM's development of Internet 2 applications. He has participated in Internet
Society events for a while. Before to Baker, he also held the position of IAB chair.

Tim Berners-Lee - The creator of HTML, with a background in text

processing software development and system architecture for real-time
communications, created the World Wide Web in 1989 as an internet-based
hypermedia project for international information sharing. at the European
Particle Physics Laboratory (CERN), where you are employed.

Mark Andreesen - Initiator of Netscape. When the World Wide Web

started to gain popularity, Marc Andreesen was a student and a part-time
employee at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
at the University of Illinois. He was able to become highly familiar with the
Internet thanks to his employment at NCSA. Eric Bina, a fellow NCSA
employee, was enlisted by Andreesen in 1992 to assist with his project. The
two never stopped working. Their new browser was given the name
Mosaic. In terms of graphics, it was far more advanced than other browsers at the time. It was
made to display HTML pages like other browsers, but new formatting tags like "center" were
included.
Jack Kilby (left) & Robert Noyce (Right) - Co-
inventor of the silicon microchip.

Robert Metcalfe - ARPANET engineer and inventor of Ethernet, and

founder of 3Com

Esther Dyson - Visionary who helped start the Electronic Frontier

Foundation, and who was the first Chairman of ICANN at its beginning in
October 1998.
-- E N D --
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