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Arpanet
Arpanet was created by the US Department of Defence’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) during the Cold War and was the first fully working packet switching network. The purpose of this was to share resources on the computer for scientific purposes. Information in little components (packets) could be sent to many people easily and they could be rebuilt at their destination. -
Newsgroups, Bulletin Boards
A newsgroup is basically an online discussion on a specific subject. During, the 1970s individuals at universities and colleges wanted a method to communicate, but they never had the resources such as those in the military available to them, so they developed Usenet. Usenet is short for ‘User Network'.
Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) are similar to newsgroups. However, these aalso allow you to download and upload data. -
Email
Also known as electronic mail. It is a protocol of sending, receiving and saving/storing messages. These communication networks can be computers, laptops or mobile phones. The first email system that sent messages to someone’s desk was MAILBOX; this was used by Massachusetts Institute of Technology in1965. The first email was sent between computers that were next to each other, the connection between the two used was ARPANET. -
PC Modem
1977 was a great milestone for the internet as we know it today. The first PC Modem was established by Dale Heatherington and Dennis Hayes, this was a vital piece of technology that permitted the internet to grow and be a huge success that it is today -
The International Packet Switched Service
The International Packet Switched Service 1978 is also known an IPSS. It is simply a type of network where messages are broken up before they`re sent and then reassembled by the receiver. It was created by the USA`s Tymnet, Western Union and the UK`s General Post Office in 1978. The system was a huge success; by 1981 it could be accessed in the UK, USA, Canada, Europe, Hong Kong and Australia and by the 1990s it provided a worldwide networking structure. -
Minitel
Minitel was a service provided by Videotex, this was an online network run via telephone lines. It was first launched nationwide in 1982, but was first established in the period of the late 1970s in Brittany, France. The network had access to many services for example; access to bank accounts, online directory, and is believed to be the most successful online service before the World Wide Web. -
TCP/IP Protocol
The TCP/IP protocol was used to convert all parts of any networks including ARPANET so that they could use the same means of communicating. Both the TCP and IP were developed by the Department of Defence. The purpose of this was to connect together a variety of networks, the services that these networks provided was mail, file transfer and remote login. -
Domain Name Addressing
This system is used to help users to navigate through the internet easily. The Domain Name System (DNS) is its own network, if a server is not able to interpret a certain domain name; it asks another server until the correct IP address is found.
Each computer has its own exclusive number called Internet Protocol (IP), this is the number used to send out and retrieve information from computers within the network. -
First Commercial Dial-Up
Commercial dial up services enable computers or laptops to make a telephone call through an Internet Service Provider, a modem has to be connected to the computer for this to happen. There are still many software’s and ISP`s that provide these services for example, NetZero and Mac OS X.
It was only around 1995 that dial up services become widely available to the public; these services were offered by CompuServe, America Online and Prodigy. -
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web or W3 was invented by Computer Scientist Time-Berners Lee in 1991. The project began at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research). The initial purpose was to make software available to scientists to share information globally through a computer. During 1991 the first version, of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) was published. This was the language used by hypertext documents to communicate over the internet. -
First Used Browser
Mosaic was the first broadly used graphical browser for the World Wide Web; it was first released on Thursday April 22nd 1993. Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina are accredited for the development of this software at the National Centre for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). -
Search Engines
A search engine is a program that searches for articles or sites across the internet based on your keywords. It offers you a list of the most popular sites and the most relevant to your search.
The first search engine called Archie, was invented by University Students Peter Deutsch, Alan Emtage and Bill Heelan in the early 1990`s. -
Java Released
ava is an 18 years old program that was released by Sun Microsystems and James Gosling on 23rd May 1995. The original design was for interactive television, but it was too complex for the digital cable. Today, there are many applications that require Java and will not work without this and many more are being made every day. This program is used in a variety of applications from scientific computers to everyday games consoles. -
Web TV
Web TV is simply television content made for the World Wide Web, there are many companies that produce programs just for viewing on the web, for example; Next New Networks, Take 180, Revision3 etc. -
Dotcom Bubble Burst
During the 1990s many E-commerce businesses were set up, for example: in 1994 Amazon was founded, in 1995 EBay was created and many more businesses started, some made millions in a matter of a few months. Due to this, business rate grew rapidly too fast to be maintained this led to the dotcom bubble burst in 2000.
Even though stocks feel by around 80%, some companies remained steady and managed to remain within the market sector. -
Skype
Skype is an internet based computer software, it allows the user to communicate to others around the world via video and audio based technology. It was first released to the public in August 2003. -
YouTube
YouTube is a website that allows users to watch and share videos online; it was first made available on February 14th 2005 and it currently has over 1 billion unique users each month. This website was created by PayPal employees; Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. -
3G Internet
In 2003, the mobile phone operator ‘3’ launched the first 3G (third generation) network, for mobile phones, which led to the increase of wireless internet connectivity -
Dropbox Service
This file hosting service was founded in 2007, but was released in August 2008. This system allows the user to create folders on any computers, it them synchronises them allows you to view them on any computer. -
Internet Explorer 8
This is currently the latest web browser developed by Microsoft. It is not the first and will not be the last of its kind; this is a much improved version on the Internet Explorer 7 and a better faster version IE 10 will soon be introduced.
