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National Science Foundation (NSF)
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is a government agency located in the US assisting education and research to do with engineering and science. It was formed on the 10th May 1950, located in Virginia. -
ARPANET
ARPANET stands for Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, which started in 1969. It was the first network which supported packet switching, and was responsible for the birth of the internet. It was first used in the US Department of Defense and universities to connect computers in a network so that if a single computer was destroyed, the other computers would still function. It became popular and eventually was used by colleges and schools, and in turn the general public. -
Bulletin Boards
• Bulletin boards were one of the first types of social tool used on the internet, which started out in the 80’s. Bulletin boards are usually free to use and are similar to forums. The phone line was used to communicate with each other, so it was common for the users to communicate nearby each other to avoid large phone bills. -
First e-mail sent
• E-mail is a type of electronic communication that can send data to other e-mail users through the internet in packets. The first email sent by ARPANET was in 1971. Both the sender and receiver require an email address, for example, user1@treviglas.cornwall.sch.uk. The “user1” part of the address represents the owner of the email address, and the part after the @ sign is the domain, which represents the website or company issuing the email address to the user. It is cheap and easy to use. In 20 -
IPv4 created
IPv4 is the 4th version of the Internet Protocol created in 1977, but is the first to be used worldwide. It is the most popular IP address to use and would have enough addresses for 4,294,967,296 devices. It is thought to run out in the near future which brought about the invention of IPv6 in 1995. -
International Packet Switched Service
• The International Packet Switched Service was founded in 1978 by the General Post Office (GPO), along with Tymnet and the Western Union International. It started growing from Europe to spread into Canada, USA, Australia and Hong Kong in 1981, until the 90’s saw it becoming a worldwide network. It can be used by companies and the public, which required a PSS (Packet Switch Stream) to work. -
First Internet Blog
The first blog was Usenet, created in 1983, which allowed users to discuss various topics from their computers to other users around the world. -
TCP/IP
• The TCP/IP protocol allows computer hosts to be connected on the internet. It was introduced in 1983, and it verifies transmission of data in a network, making sure the packet is received without any errors. The TCP and IP protocols were the first networking protocols. TCP decides the address, transmission and format of the data sent and received. The TCP/IP ADDRESS model is maintained by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). -
Domain Name System
• The Domain Name System (DNS) was created by Paul Mockapetris in 1984. The amount of users and data on the internet is continually growing, so it would become more difficult to tell the difference between sites if they all have the same domain, the default being the hosts.txt file. Domain names can be bought from providers for a set price. -
NSFNET
• The National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) created by NSF started off in 1985 in order to research more advanced research and education networking within the US. The NSFNET plays a large part of the Internet backbone. -
Internet Engineering Task Force
On January 16, 1986, the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) was created to improve the usability of the internet. The people managers and participants volunteer to work with the IETF, but can get paid by funds from the sponsors they own, or the employers. -
10,000 Hosts
• By 1987, there were 10,000 hosts in total around the world. From there, the number of hosts increased rapidly, until reaching 1 billion in 2012. Business websites gained more money because of the increased number of hosts, but the fewer amounts of domain names available became one of the disadvantages of so many hosts. -
Morris worm infection
• In 1988, one of the first internet worms, known as Morris, infected an estimated 6,000 UNIX computers, losing $100,000 to $10,000,000 worth of damage. It was create by Robert Tappan Morris from Cornell, who launched the worm in November 2nd 1988. Its purpose was to attempt to increase the size of the internet, but its spread made it malicious, as it would not prompt a computer if it had a copy of Morris already running, making the computer slower until becoming unusable -
First Dial-up
• The first dialup initiated commercially was in 1990, called world.std.com. this was the first provider of internet dial-up access. Dialup is a way of connecting to the internet using a telephone line, but had a maximum speed of 56kbits per second. Broadband speeds today average to around 5-15mbits per second, which is much faster than in 1990. -
First Search Engine
Archie was the name of the first search engine, in 1990 by Alan Emtage. It was very basic and simple, and was free for the public to use. -
First Web Browser
The first web server began in 1991, in the US at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in California. The first web browser was created by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990, and was released to CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in 1991. It wasn’t very user friendly and is very different to web browsers today. -
First Commercial Web Browser
In 1993, Mosaic was created by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). This helped the internet grow, as it made the general public more aware of the internet, making them want to use it. -
Amazon.com Founded
In 1994, Amazon.com was founded, which started out as an offline bookstore. It was founded by Jeff Bezos, and today it is the largest online retailer in the world. Its headquarters locate in Seattle, in South Lake Union. It also has European headquarters in Luxembourg City and Miami in Florida. -
IPv6 created
A new version of Internet Protocol, IPv6 was created in 1995. It was designed to allow for many more addresses for the ever increasing amount of devices being made which would use up more and more addresses. IPv4 only allowed as much as 4,294,967,296 addresses, which would end up being an insufficient amount of addresses for all the mobile phones, computers, laptops etc. in the world. IPv6 would have about 10 octillion times more than IPv4 could have, making the chance of IPv6 running out very -
First VOIP Software
• VOIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol, and is a method of communication on the internet. Vocaltec designed the first software for VOIP, “Internet Phone”. It supported microphones, speakers and sound cards. It did however have poor quality in sound and connection, but was popular and successful at the time. -
Internet Explorer 1 created
In August 16, 1995, the first Internet Explorer was created by Microsoft. It was included with Windows 95 and is very basic, and looks and performs very different to web browsers today. -
The word "internet" used daily
• In 1996, the word “internet” was a common word for people to every day, as a large number of people knew what it was. This became one of the big factors causing the increase the numbers of internet users, as more and more people were getting more interested in the internet. -
Adobe Flash Introduced
Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) was designed by Jonathan Gay from Adobe Systems, introduced in 1996. Flash is used to create animations and interactive features, usually on web pages. Adobe began in 1992 as a graphics and web-development software in California. It is used for playing videos on YouTube, for example, so the Flash plugin needs to be installed in the web browser to view the videos. -
First Instant Messaging program
• Instant Messaging started out in 1996 where 4 computer experts in Israel wished to communicate to each other instantly online. They decided to create Mirabilis, a company created in November that year, introducing an application named ISQ (I Seek You). 6 months later, around 850,000 users were registered with Mirabilis. It was bought by Digital Sky Technologies for $187.5 million in April 2010. -
10,000,000 internet users
• The number of internet users reached the 10 million milestone in 1997. -
Google Search created
• Google search is a search engine that was created on September 15th 1997. It is owned by the company Google and today is the most used search engine on the internet. Today, Google has many features as well as the basic search feature, including Google Image Search, Google Maps, search suggestions, Google Videos and Google Shopping. -
Dotcom Bubble Burst
The Dotcom Bubble burst in early 2000, causing the 2000 stock market crash. The crash lost close to 8 trillion dollars worldwide. -
Broadband created
Broadband internet was invented in 2000 and had significantly faster speeds than dialup had. John Alexander was the inventor of the very first broadband connection. It can transmit many signals and types of traffic at once, which is what a dialup modem can’t do. Broadband can operate on optical fibre cables, a twisted pair and even wireless, as well as coaxial cables. With dialup, it would take from around 10 minutes to half an hour for one to download a song online, which is around 4MB. It wo -
Moodle created
In 2002 Moodle, an e-learning software was created, and is used by universities and schools to create online courses which students can enrol themselves in. It also includes assignment submissions, where students can upload work, forums, downloading files, grading and site news. It is also used for students in schools where they can be graded on work in their courses by teachers on the website. -
Facebook Launched
Facebook started in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, from Harvard University. It was first called “The Facebook” in 2004. It was first used by 1,200 students of Harvard University in the first 24 hours, until the majority of the university had a profile on The Facebook. It later spread to all US universities. By August 2005, the website Facebook.com was bought for $200,000 which became worldwide to universities in late 2005. It then became free for anyone to sign up for in September 2006, if -
Twitter created
The company Twitter was created on March 21st 2006 by Jack Dorsey. It is an online social networking service similar to Facebook, but is able to send and receive short messages to different users of the service, called ‘tweets’. Its headquarters are in San Francisco located in the United States, and currently has more than 500 million users online since 2012. The first ‘tweet’ was sent by Dorsey on March 21st 2006, the message being “just setting up my twttr”.