Introduction
It’s difficult to attribute the invention of the internet to a single human. As one would imagine with technology as vast and ever-changing as the internet. Hundreds of pioneering physicists, designers, and engineers worked on the internet. Thus, the history of the internet is quite vast. Each designed new features and inventions that gradually combined to create the modern-day “digital superhighway.”
Many physicists expected global communication networks even before the infrastructure to create the internet existed. In the early 1900s, Nikola Tesla first thought of the concept of a “global wireless system.” In the 1930s and 1940s, landing-edge theorists like Vannevar Bush and Paul Otlet dreamed of industrialized books and media storage networks that anyone could search easily.
With the development of ARPANET or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network[1] in the late 1960s, the Internet’s first working version was born. Initially financed by the United States Department of Defense. ARPANET used packet switching to enable several computers to connect over a single network.
ARPAnet transmitted its first message on October 29, 1969: a “node-to-node”[2] correspondence from one device to another. (interesting to note that the first computer, which was the size of a small building, was housed in a UCLA research lab, and the second one was housed in a Stanford research lab.) Even though the short and easy message—“LOGIN” was displayed, it collapsed the newly developed ARPA network: The Stanford machine only obtained the note’s initial two letters.
The development of the internet over time
Today, many students will fail to finish their last thesis paper for a psychology class if they didn’t access Wikipedia and Google. Higher education has improved and has been more available to many candidates thanks to the Internet. Without higher learning institutions, the Internet may not have become the incredibly versatile platform it is today.
1945: SCI-FI AUTHOR ARTHUR C. CLARKE ENVISIONS SATELLITE NETWORK.– HISTORY OF INTERNET
Clarke was the first to suggest an integrated communication network based on geosynchronous satellite technologies, which is much more impressive considering that he projected this long before Sputnik 1 was even deployed! He also expected geostationary satellites, which would orbit synchronize with Earth and remain at a fixed point above the equator.
1961: ENTER HOWARD HUGHES.
Hughes created the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932 to improve aerospace technologies for the US government. Hughes Space and Communications Company, a Hughes Aircraft subsidiary, partnered with NASA in 1961 to work on the Syncom mission, effectively realizing Clarke’s grand vision.
1963: THE LAUNCH OF SYNCOM 2 TOOK PLACE.
The deployment of Syncom 2, the earth’s first geostationary satellite, was a triumph for Hughes and NASA. For his early studies on geosynchronous satellite networking capabilities, Arthur C. Clarke received the Stuart Ballantine Medal from the Franklin Institute in 1963.
1964: SYNCOM 3, SATELLITE TV CAME INTO EXISTENCE.– HISTORY OF INTERNET
In 1964 Syncom 3, manufacturers launched the first geostationary satellite. People use the satellite to relay the 1964 Winter Olympics to the United States. This enabled American audiences to see a transcontinental phenomenon in real-time.
1969: TWO COMPUTERS CONNECT VIA SATELLITE COMMUNICATION.
With the establishment of ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), the first actual packet switching network, five years after Syncom 3, the Internet’s foundation as we know engineers laid it. On October 29, 1969, history was made when two computers (one at Stanford and the other at UCLA) linked for the first time through satellite communication. This made these two universities the first hosts of what would soon become the Internet.
1970: ARPANET CONTINUES TO PUSH THE ENVELOPE. – HISTORY OF INTERNET
Harvard, MIT, and BBN, the company that developed the “interface message processor” computers. They connected to the network, formed an ARPANET network.
1971: THE BIRTH OF EMAIL.
Ray Tomlinson, an MIT alumnus, invented email. While email addresses featured the “@” mark. It was initially used to differentiate the recipient’s name from the device rather than the domain, as it is now.
The year 1983 saw the development of domains while the internet gained all the momentum for it. The internet also became assessable to many remote regions, thereby gaining even more popularity. Furthermore, with the development of the world wide web and various social networking sites. There was a boost in Internet usage and how people saw it. People have now started to realize the power of the Internet and have brought it to maximum use.