Internet device

 Frequently Asked Questions

What is the brief history of Internet?

A very brief history of the internet begins with ARPANET in 1969, which initially connected four universities' computers to each other. It grew and developed into what we recognize as the internet today, which became available for public access in 1991.

Who invented the internet first?

The internet was created through the work of many people. However, the first person to envision a network of connected computers was J.C.R. Licklider.

Who truly invented the Internet?

The internet was invented through the work of many people, not just one. Some of the key figures were Lawrence Roberts, who proposed and led ARPANET for many years, and Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the World Wide Web.

History of Internet

Why was the internet created? In the 1950s and 60s, the United States was engaged in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Each country was working to increase its science and technology capabilities in order to prevent nuclear attacks from the other, and also remain capable of attacking the other should the situation devolve. At that time, computers were much larger and more expensive than today's models. Mainframe computers took up entire rooms, and were only able to do specific tasks. Researchers needed to be able to use the computers to perform these tasks, but often had to travel long distances to find a computer to do a specific task. The proposed solution was a way to connect the computers so they could speak to each other, allowing researchers to share data without needing to travel to the location of the computer.

Mainframe computers were the first to be connected by the internet.

How was the internet created? The problem with having computers communicate with each other was that the method of transferring data from one computer to another, circuit switching, took a long time and could easily be interrupted. All of the data had to be sent in one packet, and if the connection was interrupted at any time during the process, none of the data would get through. Scientists developed a different method called packet switching to overcome this problem. With packet switching, the data could be broken up into smaller segments, and each segment could be sent individually. The smaller amounts of data took less time to transfer, and if an interruption occurred, some of the data would have made it through and the process could be continued without having to start over completely. Once the data reached its destination, the packets were able to be re-assembled into a complete packet.

The evolution of the internet continued from here. Packet switching allowed computers to connect to each other over a network called ARPANET, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. When did the internet start? In 1969, the first computers communicated over ARPANET from UCLA to SRI in California. This initial network only had four nodes, but more were added to allow research universities to share data and other resources. After ARPANET, other networks were developed, but the individual networks could not communicate with each other. In order to solve this problem, a set of rules called the Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol were developed, known as TCP/IP. These rules allowed for universal communication across all networks, and made sure that packets sent over a network would be delivered to the correct destination.

This 1982 map shows the entire internet at the time; each oval is a network, and each rectangle is a router.