Timeline: History of the Web

Period: Dec 10, 1950 to Dec 10, 1969

Defence department

Defense department, worried about nuclear war, set up the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), later renamed the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

Sep 9, 1969

Packet Switching

Packet swithing tested between two computers, one at the University of California and the other at the University of Utah. It worked and ARPANET was created.

Dec 10, 1973

Transatlantic Cables Lain

Transatlantic cables lain making it possible for an international network.

Dec 10, 1980

Companies get involved

Large companies begin adding their own networks

Feb 10, 1981

ARPANET

ARPANET grows to include over 200 smaller networks

Jul 10, 1981

ARPANET Split

There was so much traffic on the network that the Defense Department split it into ARPANET and MILNET, MILNET was a military network.

Nov 10, 1981

CSNET

National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Computer Science Network (CSNET) for use by educational and research institutions that did not have acces to ARPANET.

Aug 10, 1985

Host computers

There are 2000 host computers.

Aug 10, 1986

NSFNET

NSF, NASA, and the Department of Education fund CSNET and it becomes the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET)

Aug 10, 1989

Global Enterprise

NSF allowed two commercial e-mail services to connect to the network (MCI and CompuServe) which set loose a huge growth and development of the global enterprise side of the web.

Mar 10, 1993