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Advanced Research Projects Agency created in response to the USSR's launch of Sputnik. The agency creates a communications network between several major U.S. universities with national defense in mind.
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MIT's Compatible Time-Sharing System was used to share files from a central disk. Infromal uses of this were the forerunner of modern Email.
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The U.S. Department of Defense set TCP/IP as the standard for military computer networking. This event led to the concept of a world-wide network of networks: the internet.
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The Domain Name System uses extensions on addresses such as .com, .edu, & .gov. The system associates information with easy to use domain names.
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a.k.a. the "Morris Worm", this virus temporarily shut down 10% of the world's internet servers. It resulted in the first conviction under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
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Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist at CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics), envisions it as a more effective way to communicate at CERN. He soon realized that the system could be implemented around the world. The "Web" is based on hypertext and would link sites on the internet via hypertext.
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The World becomes the 1st provider of dail-up for consumers.
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Commerce sites begin to launch and begin mass marketing campaigns through email. This introduces the term "spamming" to internet terminology. The word was named after the food (spiced ham) after its similar use in a Monty Python sketch.
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Sun Microsystems releases Java: an internet programming language.
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NASA broadcasts images from the Pathfinder Mars mission on their website. The site gets 46 million hits in one day; breaking internet traffic records.
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Company opens its first office in Menlo Park, California.
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More than 50% of users are from the USA.
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It was the most visited social networking site in the world from 2005 to 2008; even surpassing Google at times.
