Individuals who played crucial roles in the development of the

internet.
When we search the internet about how the internet was invented, two words
that we o en come across are “Cold War” and “ARPANET”. Now let us consider
about these. Actually, the origin of the internet happened in the 1950s in America.
It was born as a result of the cold war between Soviet Russia and America.
Scien sts and military experts in America thought that what would happen if the
Russians a acked their na onal communica on system.
As a solu on to this, J.C.R Licklider of MIT, who was the first head of Computer
Research program at ARPA, purposed his galac c network concept in 1962. “He
envisioned a globally interconnected set of computers through which everyone
could quickly access data and programs from any site.” [1] This is a very similar
concept to today’s internet. This idea was eventually adopted by ARPA and it led
to the development of ARPANET. ARPANET used packet switching technology, that
allowed data to be transmi ed in small packets across a network of
interconnected computers. This concept was first explored independently by Paul
Baran in 1960s and Donald Davis in 1965s. [2] lawrance Roberts was the program
manager of the ARPAnet and the one who lead the overall system design. [3] He
invited Leonard Kleinrock into the ARPAnet to model and measure the
performance of packet switching in ARPAnet. Kleinrock supervised to sent first
message on ARPAnet. [4] Then many packet-based networks came to the fore. but
these networks couldn’t communicate with each other. As a solu on to this,
Robert Khan and Vinton Cerf developed a new protocol called “Transmission
control protocol” (TCP) to provide common set of protocols that would enable
communica on between computers on different networks in 1970s. In 1978, TCP
was split into two protocols, TCP and IP. Then in 1983, TCP/IP became the
standard host protocol on the ARPAnet. A er that ARPAnet grew quickly and
became “INTERNET” which we use today.
In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee invented World Wide Web and he created 1st web server,
web browser and HTML. It made easier to access and share informa on over the
internet. Paul Mockapetris and Jon Postel invented Domain Name System (DNS)
that converts IP addresses into simple names in 1983. [5] In 1971, Computer
Engineer Ray Tomlinson invented Email. All these people were involved in the
ARPAnet project. Apart from that, Bill gates (Cofounder-Microso ) and Mark
Zuckerburg(Cofounder- Facebook) also played pivotal roles in the development of
modern internet and compu ng technology. Finally, the development of the
internet to the present state has been done for a long me with the contribu on
of various people.

Family tree:
J.C.R Licklider (Galac c network concept)
Lawrence Roberts (Program manager- ARPAnet)
Paul Baran Donald Davis (Packet switching technology)
Leonard Kleinrock (who model and measure performance in
packet switching in ARPAnet)
Robert Khan Vinton Cerf (TCP/IP)
Tim Berners Lee (www)
Paul Mockapetris Jon Postel (DNS)
Ray Tomlinson (E mail)
Bill Gates ( Microso )
Mark Zuckerburg (Facebook)

References

[1] "Internet Society," [Online]. Available: h ps://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history-

internet/brief-history-internet/.

[2] "Packet switching," [Online]. Available: h ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_switching.

[3] "lawrence Roberts," [Online]. Available: h ps://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_roberts.htm.

[4] "wikipedia Leonardo kleinrock," [Online]. Available:

h ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Kleinrock.

[5] "A short history of the internet," [Online]. Available:

h ps://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/short-history-internet.

P.M.J Pathiraja,
210448R.