History of the Internet

Interface Message Processors Created

Jan 5, 1969

Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN) awarded Packet Switch contract to build Interface Message Processors (IMPs) in January

First Email Sent

Jul 21, 1972

Prior to 1972, UCLA, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah were able to transfer information back and forth. In 1972, the first actual email was sent.

Ray Tomlinson (BBN) modifies email program for ARPANET where it becomes a quick hit. The @ sign was chosen from the punctuation keys on Tomlinson's Model 33 Teletype for its "at" meaning (March)
Larry Roberts writes first email management program (RD) to list, selectively read, file, forward, and respond to messages (July)

National Science Foundation Grant for CSNET

May 21, 1981

CSNET (Computer Science NETwork) built by a collaboration of computer scientists and Univ of Delaware, Purdue Univ, Univ of Wisconsin, RAND Corporation and BBN through seed money granted by NSF to provide networking services (especially email) to university scientists with no access to ARPANET. CSNET later becomes known as the Computer and Science Network.

First Browser Launched- Mosaic

Apr 22, 1993

Mosaic takes the Internet by storm (22 Apr); WWW proliferates at a 341,634% annual growth rate of service traffic. Gopher's growth is 997%.

AOL and CompuServe Launched

Mar 6, 1995

Traditional online dial-up systems (CompuServe, America Online, Prodigy) begin to provide Internet access