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Packet Switching
In 1964 a man named Paul Baran created what is known as packet switching. This was done to support the DoDs efforts to create an internet. Packet switching is when a file is split into thousands of small fragments called packets. These packets are sent across the internet and put back together again once they reach their destination. -
The creation of ARPANET
In 1969 the first packet switching network was created. The DoD called it ARPANET. The linking of the first systems was achieved by Lawrence Roberts. The purpose of it was to link scientists and engineers throughout the country. It was also a tactical device to give them an advantage over the Soviet Union. The original 4 links were systems in Utah, UCLA, UCSB and SRI. -
E-mail
E-Mail was created in 1971 it was abbreviated from the term Electronic Mail. The first e-mail was sent by Ray Tomlinson. -
Stanford Record Keepers
In 1973 Stanford became the official record keeper of the addresses of every computer connected to ARPANET. This meant that the staff at Stanford had to update an address if it changed. This also meant that the users of computers needed to keep an updated list of the addresses or the things they sent would not reach the recipient. -
TCP/IP
In 1974 TCP/IP was created. TCP was a way of formatting packets that became the standard. This was done because it was difficult to communicate across a system and the introduction of TCP made it much easier. But TCP was not implemented until the early 80s. -
Private Servers
NSFNET had a policy that prohibited commercial traffic on the website. But in 1988 they connected some private email servers to NSFNET. -
The World Wide Web
In 1989 two people, Robert Cailliau and Tim Berners-Lee started working on a better way to navigate through the internet. At the time it was difficult navigate the internet as you had to know the exact place you were going or whatever request or message was being sent would not make it there. These two are credited with the creation of the World Wide Web which is what contains all website and data on the internet. -
The End of ARPANET
In 1990 ARPANET shut down and was officially replaced by NSFNET. At this time ARPANET was slow and inefficient and had no users. -
Public access to the internet/Mosaic.
In 1993 the internet was made public and no longer restricted to military, science and academic purposes. Also at this time there were 130 websites. In 1993 the browser called Mosaic was created by Marc Andreessen, it was the first step into web design and development as it showed users how simple it was to create a website. -
NSFNET/Netscape Navigator
In 1995 NSFNET shut down and gave the ISPs the responsibility of managing the internet. This meant the internet was no longer a free service. At this time the most popular browser called NetScape Navigator had over 10 Million users even though it was only created a year prior. -
Dotcom Bubble
Between 1998 and 2002 the money invested in technology shares increased massively. This was known as the dotcom bubble. The hope was that the industry was experiencing a technological revolution. Ultimately this boom in investments was doomed to fail. Investors began to sell off huge amounts of shares leading to a market crash. The total losses were equal to $5 Trillion. Even though so much money was lost these mistakes were fundamental for making the basics of the ecommerce sites we use today. -
The internet today
Today there are over 8.7 billion devices connected to the internet. There is also over 1.8 billion websites online. The amount of data on the internet is over 1 trillion Gigabytes. For reference most laptops only have around the storage capacity of around 250 Gigabytes. The population in 2020 alone consumed over 70 Trillion Gigabytes of data.