History of the Internet

Electronic Mail

Mar 26, 1972

Electronic mail is introduced by Ray Tomlinson, a Cambridge, Mass., computer scientist. He uses the @ to distinguish between the sender's name and network name in the email address.

"Internet"

Mar 26, 1982

The word “Internet” is used for the first time.

Worm

Mar 26, 1988

A virus called the Internet Worm temporarily shuts down about 10% of the world's Internet servers.

White House

Mar 26, 1994

The White House launches its website www.whitehouse.gov.
Initial commerce sites are established and mass marketing campaigns are launched via email, introducing the term “spamming” to the Internet vocabulary. Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark start Netscape Communications. They introduce the Navigator browser.

Internet Usage

Mar 26, 1996

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

Mar 26, 1998

Google opens its first office, in California.

Illegal Music

Mar 26, 2003

It's estimated that Internet users illegally download about 2.6 billion music files each month.

Youtube

Mar 26, 2005

YouTube.com is launched.

Websites

Mar 26, 2006

There are more than 92 million websites online.

Colorado Rockies

Mar 26, 2007

Colorado Rockies' computer system crashes when it receives 8.5 million hits within the first 90 minutes of World Series ticket sales.