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The Birth of "ARPANET"
The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was a precursor to the internet that allowed computers across the country to interact with each other and share information on a single network via telephone lines. -
First Email Was Sent
Ray Tomlinson, an American computer scientist invented the email. Although he sent the first email to himself, he does not remember what he wrote as the message. During that time, the email could only support plain text as there were no formatting features yet. -
The First “.com” Debuts
The first ".com" domain name was registered to a computer company out of Massachusetts named Symbolics. "Symbolics.com" planted its flag in the ground a year before HP and IBM and two years before Apple decided to take the ".com" plunge for themselves. -
The World Wide Web
It was first proposed by computer scientist; Tim Berners-Lee in 1989. He hoped to find a better way for scientists to share data. WWW is a collection web pages, accessible through a network of computers called the internet. Berners wrote three technologies "URL", "HTML," and "HTTP" that would help create a user-friendly interface for the internet. -
First Ever Messaging App
Instant messaging is a type of online chat allowing immediate transmission of messages over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and triggers a transmission to the recipients, who are all connected on a common network. It was the first of many others -
First Picture Uploaded
Exactly 24 years ago, the first picture was uploaded on the web. The photo that captured four slickly dressed women was posted by Tim Burners Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web. The four women belonged to an all-female comedy band called "Les Horrible Cernettes" also known as the Horrible CERN Girls. The self-described “high energy rock band” was formed by employees at Switzerland’s European Organization for Nuclear Research (or CERN). -
The First Webcam was used
In 1991, when a group of researchers working in the computer lab at the University of Cambridge wanted to keep track of whether or not the community coffeepot was full, they rigged up a camera to monitor it for them. The rudimentary webcam, along with some programming w -
The Release of Yahoo
Electrical engineering students Jerry Yang and David Filo created a human-edited web directory they initially called it, “Jerry and David’s guide to the World Wide Web” in January 1994. Two months later, they shrewdly renamed it “Yahoo,” an abbreviation of “Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle,” and a new way to browse the web was born. -
Wi-fi Becomes Wireless
When Wi-Fi first became commercially available to consumers in 1997, it gave people a look at a world without annoying cables tethering them to their modems whenever they wanted to browse the web. Simply put, the technology allows digital devices to exchange data via radio waves, according to Scientific American, and it's now a standard feature on everything from tablets and phones to video game consoles and robot vacuums. -
Wikipedia Started Crowdsourcing
Wikipedia began as a free online encyclopedia for people looking to research new topics, cram before a big test, or just settle a bar bet. But the very same open-platform nature that allows the information to be accessible for all also means people can add their own revisions and edits to pages, without the rigorous fact-checking you get from a traditional encyclopedia. -
Facebook Launches
Originally debuted as "Thefacebook", an online directory created by Mark Zuckerberg strictly for Harvard students that became the most powerful social network in the world. Not only has it connected people across the globe and, more importantly, reunited high school friends who share a love for cat videos, but it precipitated an ongoing reckoning about the harmful effects of social media on individuals, politics, and societies around the globe. -
Google Goes Public
Though other search engines beat it to market, Google has outlasted pretty much all of them, and has since morphed into an all-encompassing tech company that includes mapping technology, email systems, a music service, a streaming video game platform, and almost anything else you can imagine. -
Youtube Makes It's Big Splash
YouTube was invented in 2005 on Valentine’s Day by Steve Chen, Jawed Karim, and Chad Hurley. Their goal was to allow people to capture and upload moments like that we'd later call them "viral moments" and spread them across the web for people to watch without needing a TV. -
Twitter Becomes a Tweet
Twitter, is an online social media platform and microblogging service that distributes short messages of no more than 280 characters. The service was influential in shaping politics and culture in the early 21st century -
Netflix Becomes a Hit
Netflix started offering a small selection of TV shows and movies online for its users to stream straight from their devices, in addition to the DVDs-by-mail rental service that first put the company on the map. -
The First Ever "Iphone"
Apple’s release of the first iPhone more or less transformed the way we engage with the internet and everyone else overnight. Its sleek portability and continuously expanding list of features made it possible to talk, work, shop, and do just about everything else with a swipe of a finger. -
Instagram Launches
Instagram is a photo and video-sharing social media application that was made by Kevin Systrom. The first prototype of Instagram was a web app called Burbn, which was inspired by Systrom's love of fine whiskeys and bourbons. The Instagram app was launched on Oct. 6, 2010, and racked up 25,000 users in one day. -
Musical.ly Goes Viral
Musical.ly, was founded by Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang in Shanghai, China. Before launching Musical.ly, they teamed up to build an education social network app, through which users could both teach and learn different subjects through short-form videos (3–5 minutes long). -
The Merge of Musically and TikTok
Nearly a year after Chinese technology firm "Bytedance" acquired the video app Musical.ly, the company merged it with another of its products, TikTok. The new app will assume the name TikTok, meaning the end of the Musical.ly brand name. -
Internet Users Rise
A whopping 99% of internet users in the United States are aged between 18 and 29 years old. 75% of those aged 65 years old and above are also active internet users, as reported by Statista.