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The History of the Internet

By LauraHutson

  • 1958

    1958
    The Invention of the Modem & Creation of ARPA

  • 1964

    1964
    Development of message blocks and packet-switching by Paul Baran; Donald Davies (scientists)

  • 1966

    1966
    Lawrence G. Roberts (scientist) developed the concepts of computer networking and ARPANET

  • 1968

    1968
    RAND; MIT & UCLA ARE Building Test Networks

  • 1969

    1969
    Invention of Unix (predecessor to Linux and FreeBSD)

  • 1971

    1971
    Invention of “E-Mail” by Ray Tomlinson (programmer)

  • 1972

    1972
    Public demonstration of ARPANET at the International Computer Communications Conference

  • 1974

    1974
    Vint Cerf; Robert Khan (inventors) invent the term "Internet"

  • 1977

    1977
    The first PC modem is created by Dennis Hayes; Dale Heatherington (inventors) and TCP/IP starts linking additional networks to ARPANET

  • 1979

    1979
    MultiUser Dungeon (MUD) is created (predecessor to World of Warcraft/Second Life) by Roy Trubshaw (student developer).

  • 1980

    1980
    The invention of Apple Inc. by Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak

  • 1983

    1983
    ARPANET computers switch over to TCP/IP and Invention of “Server” by Douglas Terry, Mark Painter, David Riggle, Songnian Zhou.

  • 1984

    1984
    Invention of Domain Name Space (DNS) by Douglas Terry, Mark Painter, David Riggle, Songnian Zhou

  • 1988

    1988
    Internet Chat Relay (IRC) is created

  • 1989

    1989
    ARPANET formally expires

  • 1990

    1990
    Creation of Linux by Linus Torvalds

  • 1991

    1991
    Introduction of bill to fund “Information Superhighway” by Al Gore and The World Wide Web opens to the public -- made possible by Tim Berners-Lee