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Historical Progression of the Internet
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DARPA
Following the successful Russian launch of Sputnik, the United States government created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) as a part of the Department of Defense. The group was established to advance US technological, strategic, military, and defense systems, and its funding and future success helped shape the future of digital communication and societal interaction on an international level. -
J.C.R. Licklider
In August of 1962, Licklider of MIT wrote a number of letters and memos outlining a centralized, communicating, interregional system of digital operation. His work promoting the benefits of digital communication and as a researcher for DARPA contributed to the successful establishment of the Internet. -
Point-to-point, direct communication
Telex machines developed in the late 1960s allowed for communication between a central process and individual units, which was useful for mainframe computing in universities and large companies. However, these connections required a direct link between the communicating machines and could not be expanded to include outside units and were inflexible to changing military demands in case of an attack. These drawbacks led to research in the next decade to expand the scope of digital communication. -
ARPANET
With colloboration from Lawrence Roberts of the Lincoln Laboratory, DARPA, and MIT, ARPANET, the first successful and operational packet-switching network, was established. While previously communicating systems needed a direct link to transmit information, packets of information could now be sent from one source to a number of remote ones without difficulty. -
Ray Tomlinson
In 1971, Ray Tomlinson, who was a computer programmer born in 1941, established the first email system on ARPANET. He used the @ symbol to separate usernames, which has been in use ever since. His work contributed towards the rise of the Internet as a communicative system for personal use. -
TCP/IP
The Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol combine to allow for packet-switching function on modern networks. TCP/IP has four layers: the Link, Internet, Transport, and Application layers. It was developed by DARPA to allow for seamless communication between networked devices. -
International Telecommunication Union
With the establishment of packet-switching networks to transmit information, the ITU established X.25 and other standards for global communication. The International Packet Switched Service was the first packet-switched network that connected countries together, including Canada and Australia. The union was successful in creating standards that would allow for open communication between different kinds of systems. -
Internet Architecture Board
The Internet Architecture Board was established in 1983 as a means of overviewing and developings the standards and practices of the engineering and technical aspects of the Internet. -
UUCP
UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy, was invented in 1979 as a way of transfering files and information from one remote computer to another. It was used over dial-up connections before the widespread use of the Internet. -
National Science Foundation Network
In 1986, the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) was established to provide dialup connections to the Internet to users around the country. While the service was seen as controversial by some for perceived favoritism to certain companies over others, it played a critical role in the successful, widespread establishment of the Internet. -
European Organization for Nuclear Research
In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, proposed the protocol that would later be called the World Wide Web. The WWW was established on a system of web pages and hyperlinking, that allowed for new and interesting implementations of exisiting protocols to be utilized. -
Digital Divide
Beginning with the widespread use of the Internet in developed countries in the 1990s, a digital divide began to emerge that separated countries with access to the Internet from countries without access to the Internet. In many regions this is still a major problem, as people are unable to receive news or necessary information. Just like the industrialization of developed countries divided some countries from others, Internet access is another problematic issue on a global scale. -
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