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The idea for a global computer network
While the Internet as we know it today didn't exist in this year, the idea for a global connected network was coined in 1962 by MIT researcher J.C.R Licklider. He would later share his idea with ARPA and along with colleagues -
ILLIAC IV
ILLIAC IV, the largest supercomputer of its era, was being built under a contract with NASA. Despite its flaws that would be fixed during its lifetime, it would be plugged to ARPANET for scientific usage. More than 1,000 transistors are squeezed through its RAM chip. -
ARPANET
The creation of the precursor of the Internet, known as ARPANET. While originally conceived for military communications during the Cold War, it would also be used for higher education purposes, so the physical nodes would be installed in three higher education institutes: UCLA in Los Angeles, SRI International in Stanford, the University of Utah, and the University of California in Santa Barbara. -
Email
The first email program was created. It was called SNDMSG. It allowed for the first networked email ever for communication with other computers on the Arpanet and it was created by Ray Tomlinson. ARPA was renamed to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects) -
TCP/IP
Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf developed a protocol to connect multiple computers to multiple networks. This would become the basis for TCP/IP, the technology that if a network goes down, the others will not go down with it. -
Ethernet
In this year, Ethernet was invented by Robert Metcalfe and later developed by Xerox PARC for usage in Xerox's Alto computers for networking purposes. Daily traffic on the ARPANET exceeds 3 million packets. -
First recorded use of the word "Internet"
First use of the term Internet by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn. It was used to describe TCP/IP -
The trinity of '77
The Apple II, developed by Apple, The Commodore PET, developed by Commodore Computers, and the TRS-80, developed by Radio Shack gets released. These computers essentially create the consumer and small business markets for the computers. Larry Landweber of the University of Wisconsin creates THEORYNET which provided email between 100 researchers on different cities via a commercial packet like Telenet -
Usenet
USENET (a decentralized news network) was created by two graduate students at Duke University in North Carolina, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis and it was based on UUCP. BITNET was created in this year by IBM and it introduced "store and forward" network and it was used for emails. -
CSNET
The National Science Foundation (NSF) created CSNET, a network completely independent of ARPANET for institutions that couldn't connect to ARPANET for any reason. The NSF funded this network from 1981 to 1984. -
TCP/IP becomes standarized
The ARPANET network finally standardized the usage of TCP/IP for its network, adopted by the US department of Defense and every machine that used ARPANET required the usage of TCP/IP and this standard would become a core part of the World Wide Web. The military sections of ARPANET was split by the DoD to create a classified network called MILNET and ARPANET remains being used for Scientific research. -
DNS
Paul V. Mockapetris created Domain Name System, best known as DNS. Thanks to the growth of ARPANET maintaining a single a single host file became slow and unwieldy so he created DNS, a dynamic and distributed standard known as DNS. -
T1
The NSF started deploying its T1 lines, which the deployment would finish 3 years later on 1988. -
56k
The first NSFNET backbone based on LSF-11 Fuzball routers and it linked the six nationally funded supercomputers -
T1
The T1, created by the National Science Foundation, was upgraded to 1.5 Mbit/s for 13 sites and it included Regional Networks that in turn connected to over than 170 networks. -
World Wide Web Proposal
English Scientist Tim Berners-Lee proposes a hypertext system, which will run the Internet known as the World Wide Web. The number of hosts increased from 80,000 in January to 160,000 hosts in November. -
Private usage of the Internet
The original big three ISPs (AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy) began to emerge. While in the beginning they were closed, proprietary networks they would later grow to include access to the World Wide Web, messaging, email, and Internet portals. -
The decommission of ARPANET
ARPANET, the precursor of the WWW is finally shut down after 21 years in operation. -
The Release of the World Wide Web and its first web browser
The World Wide Web is released for usage to the public by CERN and the first web browser ever made was released. Also, the Internet backbone was upgraded by IBM, MCI and Merit to 45 Mbit/s. -
NCSA Mosaic
The first version of one of the earliest web browsers NCSA Mosaic is released. This web browser would later be licensed to Microsoft for creating Microsoft Internet Explorer. This pioneering web browser created by Marc Andreesen and Eric Bina would support many features such as displaying images on the WWW. InterNIC was created for domain name allocations and X.500 directory services and it was ran by AT&T, SRI and Network Solutions, Inc. -
Commercialization of the Internet
Several new networks were added to the NSF backbone. The commercialization of the Internet has begun in this year and many hundreds of new hosts were created for these new websites. For example Pizza Hut starts offering Pizza ordering on its website and the first cyberbank is opened. Netscape Navigator was first released in this year and it would become the first commercially successful web browser and it would dominate the web browser market until 1997. -
Amazon
The e-com site Amazon is founded by Jeff Bezos. Initially a website made for selling books, Amazon would later become a E-com juggernaut decades later. -
NSFNET gets decommissioned
NSFNET, after 10 years, gets decommisioned in favor of commercial Internet. Microsoft releases Internet Explorer, which would later overtake Netscape Navigator as the most used browser on the Internet. -
Communications decency Act
US congress passes the Communications Decency Act to regulate online pornography. The most important section however is Section 230 which provides immunity to websites when it comes to user generated content and other third-party content not made by the websites. -
The first release of Adobe Flash
FutureSplash Player (later known as Adobe Flash player) would be released. This browser plugin would power Internet multimedia content such as games, animations and videos. -
Great Firewall of China
The first steps towards creating the Great Firewall of China were done. The Firewall systematically filters websites that does not conform to Chinese Censorship laws (usually Western owned websites such as Google) and requiring these companies to comply with Chinese laws. -
Google & Netscape becomes Open Source
Google, Inc was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google's flagship product, Google Search, would become the most used Search engine on the Internet. Shortly before Netscape's purchase by AOL, Netscape open sources their browser suite to form the Mozilla project, inspiring the Open-source community, and would later form the basis for Mozilla Firefox -
Napster
Napster gets released. Naspter, a peer-to-peer file sharing site, sparks controversy and lawsuits over copyright law and digital assets. -
Dot-com bubble burst
The dot-com bubble begins to burst. The bubble started in 1995, thanks to Netscape's IPO, venture Capitalists would invest in any company or startup that would do its business on the Internet, even when they had no profit in mind. The tech stocks would rise up in Nasdaq until 2000 when the bubble finally popped. -
Bittorrent
Bittorent, a decentralized protocol for P2P file sharing, is released. This open source technology allowed the sharing of large files between users. It also became well known for its usage for piracy. Also iTunes was launched in this year, creating a new market for digital purchases of music -
Myspace
Myspace is officially launched in this year. Founded by Tom Anderson, Chris DeWolfe and Jon Hart, Myspace would become the first global network and it had the largest userbase until Facebook surpassed it. -
Facebook
Facebook is created by Mark Zuckerberg, essentially starting a new era of Social Media. In a decade this company would aggressively monetize their users by selling their user data, rivalling Google, for targeted advertising. This platform, however would have several controversies including the invasion of user's privacy, the spread of misinformation, fake news, and hate speech proliferation -
Cloud Computing & creation of Twitter.
Amazon starts marketing IT services and infrastructure towards business. The cloud basically meant that storage services and servers would be handled on a remote servers by Amazon themselves. It would later support the mobile revolution that started the next year with the release of the iPhone. During the same year, Twitter was created by Jack Dorsey and co. as a microblogging and social network. It would later have more than 330 million users. -
The launch of Netflix's streaming service
Netflix launches their streaming service in this year. Thanks to their streaming service it would make cable TV obsolete. -
HTML5
HTML5 was initially released in this year. It was created to have multimedia capabilities, introduces the markup for APIs and it would make the web better optimized for the mobile devices, which were growing at a rapid pace -
Net Neutrality
The FCC asserts the principles of a free and open Internet, saying that ISPs must give equal access to all sites and services. However, seven years later thanks to lobbying it would repeal these rules. -
Online Surveillance
Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor leaked the documents that confirmed a global online surveillance. The program known as PRISM would detail how the ISPs and Internet companies including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, and Apple would spy on its users on behalf of the US government -
The rise of Telework
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many workplaces were forced to switch to telework. By 2021 45% of the full-time US workers would work from home and in Europe 13.2% of Women and 11.5% of Men would work at home -
World record of fastest Internet speed
Scientists at the National Institute and Communications Technology in Japan, would develop an experimental optical fiber with 4 cores, instead of the usual one and the speed would have a staggering 319 TB/s. -
More than half of the entire world is connected to the Internet
As of January 2021 there were 4.66 billion people connected to the Internet Worldwide, 59.5% of the world's population, which is way higher than the amount of users connected in December 2000, which was 361 million people or 5.8% of the world's population and most of the access to the Internet would be done through mobile devices.