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ARPANET is Launched
ARPANEt was a computer network which served as the basis for the internet we all know and love today. ARPANET was a network of computers in universities across the United States. Many people think the purpose of creating the network was to prevent nuclear attacks. The Pentagon claims that the real reason for its creation is purely scientific; having a nation-wide computer network makes it easier to share info between research centres. -
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Before the World Wide Web
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First Email is sent on ARPANET
The first email sent over a ARPANET was by a man named Ray Tomlinson. The message was sent to himself, and according to him, the message's content was, "entirely forgettable." -
TCP/IP Becomes Standard
TCP/IP become the standard for communicating between computers over ARPANET in this year. -
First Spam Email Ever Sent
On May 3, 1978, spam email reared its ugly face for the first time on ARPANET. The sender's name was Gary Thuerk, a marketer for the Digital Equipment Corporation. He sent his message to 400 of 2600 users on ARPANET. -
DNS is first used
The Domain Name System, or DNS was established in 1984. Websites can now be identified with extensions like .gov, .com, and .org because of DNS. DNS makes searches easier, as opposed to remembering strings of numbers on an IP address. -
First Domain Name Ever Registered
On this day, Symbolics Computer Company based in Massachusets registered the first domain name ever, Symbolics.com. It is now a historical website, which can be visited here: http://symbolics.com/about-symbolics/ -
Proposal for World Wide Web Written
Tim Berners-Lee, a software engineer at CERN wrote a proposal for the World Wide Web, which he described as "a large hypertext database with typed links." It is not that big of a stretch to say that on this day, humanity's most important invention was conceptualized. -
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The World Wide Web in its Infancy
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First Online Gaming Services
The first online gaming service was launched on 3 November, 1991 by Japanese gaming company Sega. The service was known as Sega Meganet, and it allowed players to compete against each other over the interent via dial up internet. THis service was restricted to Japanese customers, until 1995. Even though the sevice was short-lived, it is the precursor to the large online gaming services today, such as Steam, Xbox Live, and Playstation Network. -
First Image is Uploaded onto the World Wide Web
A picture of 4 female employees at CERN pretending to be in pop group called "Les Horribles Cernettes" was the first ever image posted on the internet that we know and love today. This image was uploaded by Silvano de Gennaro, a colleague of Tim Berners-Lee. -
The World Wide Web declared available, no Royalties Required
On this day, CERN published a statement saying that made the technology of the World Wide Web available for free, allowing it to be what is today. Had this statement not been published, people may be disinterested in investing in this techonolgy, and large companies such as Yahoo!, Amazon, and Google would not even exist. -
Yahoo! is Founded
Stanford students Jerry Yang and David Filo founded this influential company in January of 1994. In its infancy, Yahoo! was a website which served as a directory for all other websites on the internet. While it may be overshadowed by companies like Google today, the creation of Yahoo! was still important to the internet's history. -
Amazon is Founded
The world's largest online retailer was founded on this day, by a man named Jeff P. Bezos. First incorporated as 'Cadabra' the company today is now valued at 88.8 billion US dollars. -
First Transaction Conducted Over the Internet
The first online transaction happened on a website called NetMarket, in which a man named Phil Brandenberger bought 'Ten Summoner's Tales', an album by rock artist Sting using his credit card. Today, over 450 billion transactions are processed on the internet every day. -
First item on eBay is sold
The first item to be ever sold on eBay was laser pointer, that didn't even work. It was sold for $14.83. -
45 Million People Use the Internet
1996 was the year when the Internet saw a total of 45 million people using it, 30 million of those people being in North America, 9 million in Europe, and 6 million in Asia. -
Google is Founded
Two Stanford Ph.D students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google on this day. At its start, Google was simply meant to be a search engine, much like Yahoo! before it. Now, it has branched out, and has become one of the world's most well-known companies, and a power player in the worlds of software and hardware. -
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The Internet After Google
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Wikipedia is Launched
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit was founded on this day. It is non-commercial, meaning that the information is displayed is solely for the sake of having it available. Today, the website is offered is 287 different languages, and there are a total of 4.717 million articles on English wikipedia alone. -
Facebook is Founded
Facebook was founded by a team consisting of Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. Zuckerberg intended this website to be used as a way for students at Harvard University to better connect with each other online. Facebook is now available to users worldwide, with 890 million active daily users. -
YouTube is Launched
On Valentine's Day, 2005, YouTube was launched. it was founded by 3 former PayPal employees. A year later, Google bought it for US $1.65 Billion. Despite complaints about how Google handles the site, YouTube still sees 6 billion hours of video uploaded on a monthly basis. -
First Video on YouTube is Uploaded
The first video ever uploaded on YouTube was by its cofounder, Jawed Karim, entitled "Me at the Zoo". The video is literally just him talking about how cool elephant's trunks are. The video is still up, and has over 17 million views. -
Reddit Founded
Reddit is an entertainment centred social network in which users can submit direct links or text posts, in which other users can then comment on. This web site was founded by two people: Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian. Reddit has a total of 174 million registered users of December 2014. -
Twitter is Founded
Twitter is an online social networking service in which its users can create text posts with a limit of 140 characters, known as tweets. It is one of the Internet's 10 most visited websites. -
First Tweet is Sent Out
On the same day Twitter was launched, its founder, Jack Dorsey, sent out the first tweet ever. It read, "just setting my twittr.". Monumental. -
Instagram is Launched
The popular picture sharing app was founded on this day. It was bought by Facebook about a year later, and it shows no signs of slowing popularity.
