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ARPANET, in full Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, utilized packet switching technology, and was the first network. The earliest successful use of ARPANET was to connect computers at Stanford and UCLA to send the message “login”. However, the link would allegedly crash upon reaching the letter “g”. -
Roy Tomlinson, an American computer programmer, would begin development of a project he dubbed “E-MAIL”, standing for Electronic Mail, which would later be used to send messages from one computer to another via a network. When designing Email Addresses, he decided to separate the username from the computer name, later domain name, using the @ symbol. -
The PC Modem, a hardware device that allows computers to send and receive information over telephone lines, was developed by Dennis Hayles and Dale Heatherington and then sold it to computer hobbyists. -
MUDs, or Multi-User Dungeons, were real-time virtual worlds, primarily text-based or storyboarded, which combined the elements of role-playing games, interactive fiction, online chat. The first MUD, simply titled “Multi-User Dungeon”, was created by Roy Trubshaw. -
Kevin MacKenzie is credited as having created the first emoticon, being “-)” representing a smiling face, in 1979. However, Scott Fahlman was the first person to propose the use of 🙂in 1982, and thus created the first modern emoticon. -
The Domain Name System, or the DNS, was created, being a way to make internet addresses easier for humans to understand than the numerical IP addresses, alongside the first Domain Name Servers. -
Nearly 30,000 hosts existed on the internet, made possible by numerous computers switching from the original Arpanet protocol, limited to only 1,000 hosts, to the higher potential of the TCP, also known as the Transmission Control Protocol, and IP standard. -
IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, is introduced, being a text-based chat system for instant messaging developed by Jakko Oikarinen, and is major milestone in the development of various future internet messaging programs. -
Originally written by Tim Berners-Lee and called “Mesh”, it was published in an issue of MacWorld to persuade CERN that a hypertext system on a global scale would be beneficial for them. -
The code for the now named “World Wide Web” was also written by Tim Berners-Lee, based on his previous proposal, using HTML, HTTP, and URL standards. -
The first web page is created on the World Wide Web, with the purpose of explaining what the World Wide Web was and how it functions. It was also created by Tim Berners-Lee. -
David Chaum, a cryptographer, created DigiCash, one of the earliest forms of electronic payment, which required user software to access notes from a bank and assign them encrypted keys. -
Six Degrees, created by Andrew Weinreich, is launched, being the first modern-esc social media platform to be created. It featured numerous now-staple features, such as personal profiles. -
HoTMaiL, the capitalized letters forming the word HTML, was the first webmail service launched, and later acquired by Microsoft in 1997. It was originally created by co-founders Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith. -
The system traces its origins to Hedy Lamarr George Antheil, who developed a system that allowed radios to switch between different frequencies. In 1997, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers approved 802.11, part of their set of local area network (LAN) technical standards, as the standard for Wi-Fi. -
Google is launched, originally a search engine developed by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1996 as a research project for Stanford University. It is now, in 2023, the most widely used search engine available on most computers. -
Wikipedia is launched, originally an open-source internet encyclopedia, as a branch of Nupedia, an older online encyclopedia, founded by Jimmy Wales, a successful bond trader. In its first year, Wikipedia had expanded to 20,000 articles, available in eighteen different languages, and Nupedia was officially replaced by Wikipedia. -
Originally created by Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard University roommates, “The Facebook” is launched, being a social media platform originally only available to college students. However, it eventually became fully accessible by anyone after its original success. -
YouTube is launched, a website intended for sharing videos, registered Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, who were all former employees of the company PayPal. In modern time, it is the second most used website on the internet, besides the browser Google. -
The first mobile smartphone released Apple, the iPhone, is made public. Its touch-sensitive screen that allowed someone to manipulate it easily with the fingertips was revolutionary, and would create a trend that most smartphones from then on would decide to follow.