History of the Internet

First two computers connected

1965

A TX-2 computer in MIT was connected to another computer located in California using a low speed dial up telephone line.

The Arpanet is born

1969

Arpaned linled four nodes: University of California at Los Angeles, Standfor Research Institute, Unioversity of California at Santa Barbara, and University of Utah. The network was wired via 50 kbps circuits. The first message sent across the network was "Login", but crashed when the letter "G" was typed in.

Network Control Protocol (NCP) is designed

1970

NCP allowed connections and flow between processes running on different computer hosts

Email is created

1972

Ray Tomison created what was to become the standard internet email address format, using the @ sign to separate user names from hosts.

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) is designed

1974

A proposal was published to connect Arpa-like networks together into so-called "inter-networks" which would have no central control.

The first PC modem

1977

The development of the first personal computer modem was done by Dennis Hayes. Initially sold to computer hobbyists.

The Bulletin Board System (BBS) appeared

1978

The appearance of BBS also supposed the Spam birth.

Term Internet was coined

1982

Also emoticons were created by Scott Fahlman by suggesting the use of =) and =( to convey emotions to other users.

Domain Name System (DNS)

1984

DNS servers allowed Internet users to type in an easy-to-remember domain name and then converted it to the IP address automatically.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is developec

1988

IRC paved away for real-time chat and the instant messaging programs we use today.

WWW protocol

1990

Tim Berners-Lee wrote the code for the World Wide Web, along with the standards for HTML, HTTP, and URLs.

Mosaic

1993

First graphical web browser for the general public was introduced. Also in the same year marked the beginning of the .gov and .org domain extensions for government and UN uses.

Hotmail is introduced

1996

The first webmail service to launch on the Internet.

Google! is launched

1998

Google is brought online, revolutionising the way people search for information.

Wikipedia

2001

Provided one of the first websites that paved the way for collective web content generation.

Skype

2003

Skype is release to the public, giving a user friendly interface to voice over IP calling.

Facebook

2004

Facebook is launched by Mark Zuckerberg.