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Charles Babbage designs his first mechanical computer
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Modem converts digital signals to electrical (analog) signals and back, enabling communication between computers.
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The first universal standard for computers, ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Exchange) is developed by a joint industry-government committee. ASCII permits machines from different manufacturers to exchange data.
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Lawrence Roberts (MIT) and Thomas Marill get an ARPA contract to create the first wide-area network (WAN) connection via long distant dial-up between a TX-2 computer in Massachusetts and a Q-32 computer in California. The system confirms that packet switching offers the most promising model for communication between computers.
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Lawrence Roberts leads ARPAnet design discussions and publishes first ARPAnet design paper: "Multiple Computer Networks and Intercomputer Communication." Wesley Clark suggests the network is managed by interconnected ‘Interface Message Processors’ in front of the major computers. Called IMPs, they evolve into today’s routers.
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BBN selects a Honeywell minicomputer as the base on which they would build the switch. The physical network was constructed in 1969, linking four nodes: University of California at Los Angeles, SRI (in Stanford), University of California at Santa Barbara, and University of Utah. The network was wired together via 50 Kbps circuits.
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The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was renamed The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (or DARPA) ARPANET was currently using the Network Control Protocol or NCP to transfer data. This allowed communications between hosts running on the same network.
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Development began on the protocol later to be called TCP/IP, it was developed by a group headed by Vinton Cerf from Stanford and Bob Kahn from DARPA. This new protocol was to allow diverse computer networks to interconnect and communicate with each other.
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First Use of term Internet by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn in paper on Transmission Control Protocol.
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Ethernet allowed coaxial cable to move data extremely fast. This was a crucial component to the development of LANs.
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every machine connected to ARPANET had to use TCP/IP. TCP/IP became the core Internet protocol and replaced NCP entirely.The University of Wisconsin created Domain Name System (DNS). It allowed packets to be directed to a domain name, which would be translated by the server database into the corresponding IP number. This made it much easier for people to access other servers, because they no longer had to remember numbers.
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MILNET serves the needs of the military and ARPANET support s the advanced research component, Department of Defense continued to support both networks.
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The Internet Engineering Task Force or IETF was created to serve as a forum for technical coordination by contractors for DARPA working on ARPANET, US Defense Data Network (DDN), and the Internet core gateway system.
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At CERN, the European Physical Laboratory, Tim Berners-Lee creates the World Wide Web. Robert Cailliau is a key proponent of the project, and helps Berners-Lee author a proposal for funding. Later, Cailliau develops, along with Nicola Pellow, the first web browser for the Mac OS operating system.
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Advanced Network & Services conducts research into high speed networking.
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Internet Society is chartered. World-Wide Web released by CERN. NSFNET backbone upgraded to T3
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nterNIC created by NSF to provide specific Internet services: directory and database services (by AT&T), registration services (by Network Solutions Inc.), and information services. Marc Andreessen and NCSA and the University of Illinois develops a graphical user interface to the WWW, called "Mosaic for X".
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Many new networks were added to the NSF backbone. Hundreds of thousands of new hosts were added to the INTERNET during this time period.First Virtual, the first cyberbank, opens.
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There are half a million Internet users.
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Founder Jack Dorsey sends the first tweet: “just setting up my twttr”
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45% of internet users ages 18-29 in serious relationships say the internet has had an impact on their relationship.
Facebook buys messaging app Whatsapp for $19 billion.
