digital timeline

  • ARPANET

    The birth of ARPANET, The United States Department of Defense created the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) in the late 1960s
  • The first email

    Sometime in late 1971, a computer engineer named Ray Tomlinson sent the first e-mail message. "I sent a number of test messages to myself from one machine to the other," he recalls now. "The test messages were entirely forgettable. . . . Most likely the first message was QWERTYIOP or something similar."
  • The first GIF

    On June 15, 1987, the most beloved image file extension on the internet was birthed by a team of CompuServe developers seeking a way to compress images with minimal data loss.
  • The World Wide Web

    The World Wide Web—commonly referred to as WWW, W3, or the Web—is a system of interconnected public webpages accessible through the Internet. The Web is not the same as the Internet: the Web is one of many applications built on top of the Internet.
  • Web Standards

    Originally HTML and related standards were discussed and agreed by a small group of interested parties on a mailing list. Later the W3 was formed, and it put in place increasingly rigorous processes, with increasing amounts of public consultation.
  • Internet Usage

    Approximately 45 million people are using the Internet, with roughly 30 million of those in North America (United States and Canada), 9 million in Europe, and 6 million in Asia/Pacific (Australia, Japan, etc.). 43.2 million (44%) U.S. households own a personal computer, and 14 million of them are online.
  • Google

    Google LLC is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial intelligence.
  • Twitter launched

    In March 2006, Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams created Twitter. The idea for Twitter came from wanting to use a short messaging system for a small group. It was available to the public in July 2006.