History of the Internet

By tmack
  • ARPA

    ARPA
    ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) goes online in December, connecting four major U.S. universities. Designed for research, education, and government organizations, it provides a communications network linking the country in the event that a military attack destroys conventional communications systems.(Exact date of founding was not known)O\
  • TCP/IP

    Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is designed and in 1983 it becomes the standard for communicating between computers over the Internet. One of these protocols, FTP (File Transfer Protocol), allows users to log onto a remote computer, list the files on that computer, and download files from that computer.
  • Words

    The word Internet is used for the first time (Exact date Unknown)
  • Trojans, and Worms, and Spyware, oh my!

    A virus called the Internet Worm temporarily shuts down about 10% of the world's Internet servers.
  • I'm home honey!

    The World (world.std.com) debuts as the first provider of dial-up Internet access for consumers.
    Tim Berners-Lee of CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics) develops a new technique for distributing information on the Internet. He calls it the World Wide Web. The Web is based on hypertext, which permits the user to connect from one document to another at different sites on the Internet via hyperlinks (specially programmed words, phrases, buttons, or graphics). Unlike other Internet proto
  • Digging

    Gopher, which provides point-and-click navigation, is created at the University of Minnesota and named after the school mascot. Gopher becomes the most popular interface for several years.
    Another indexing system, WAIS (Wide Area Information Server), is developed by Brewster Kahle of Thinking Machines Corp.
  • Official Stuff.

    The White House launches its website, www.whitehouse.gov.
    Initial commerce sites are established and mass marketing campaigns are launched via email, introducing the term “spamming” to the Internet vocabulary.
    Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark start Netscape Communications. They introduce the Navigator browser.
  • Big Cases!

    Napster is dealt a potentially fatal blow when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rules that the company is violating copyright laws and orders it to stop distributing copyrighted music. The file-swapping company says it is developing a subscription-based service.
    About 9.8 billion electronic messages are sent daily.
    Wikipedia is created.
  • Big Buys

    In a move to challenge Google's dominance of search and advertising on the Internet, software giant Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion.
    In a San Fransisco federal district court, Judge Jeffrey S. White orders the disabling of Wikileaks.org, a Web site that discloses confidential information. The case was brought by Julius Baer Bank and Trust, located in the Cayman Islands, after a disgruntled ex-employee allegedly provided Wikileaks with stolen documents that implicate the bank in