THE INVENTION
OF THE INTERNET
G'day folks,
We all use it but do you know how it came to be? Unlike technologies such as the light bulb or the
telephone, the Internet has no single “inventor.” Instead, it has evolved over
time. The Internet got its start in the United States more than 50 years ago as
a government weapon in the Cold War. For years, scientists and researchers used
it to communicate and share data with one another. Today, we use the Internet
for almost everything, and for many people it would be impossible to imagine
life without it.
The Sputnik Scare
On
October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first manmade satellite
into orbit. The satellite, known as Sputnik, did not do much: It tumbled
aimlessly around in outer space, sending blips and bleeps from its radio
transmitters as it circled the Earth. Still, to many Americans, the
beach-ball-sized Sputnik was proof of something alarming: While the brightest
scientists and engineers in the United States had been designing bigger cars
and better television sets, it seemed, the Soviets had been focusing on less
frivolous things—and they were going to win the Cold War because of it.
After Sputnik’s launch, many Americans began to think more
seriously about science and technology. Schools added courses on subjects like chemistry,
physics and calculus. Corporations took government grants and invested them in
scientific research and development. And the federal government itself formed
new agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
and the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), to
develop space-age technologies such as rockets, weapons and computers.
The Birth of the ARPAnet
Scientists
and military experts were especially concerned about what might happen in the event
of a Soviet attack on the nation’s telephone system. Just one missile, they
feared, could destroy the whole network of lines and wires that made efficient
long-distance communication possible. In 1962, a scientist from M.I.T. and ARPA
named J.C.R. Licklider proposed a solution to this problem: a “galactic
network” of computers that could talk to one another. Such a network would
enable government leaders to communicate even if the Soviets destroyed the
telephone system.
In 1965, another
M.I.T. scientist developed a way of sending information from one computer to
another that he called “packet switching.” Packet switching breaks data down
into blocks, or packets, before sending it to its destination. That way, each
packet can take its own route from place to place. Without packet switching,
the government’s computer network—now known as the ARPAnet—would have been just
as vulnerable to enemy attacks as the phone system.
“LOGIN”
In 1969,
ARPAnet delivered its first message: a “node-to-node” communication from one
computer to another. (The first computer was located in a research lab at UCLA
and the second was at Stanford; each one was the size of a small house.) The
message—“LOGIN”—was short and simple, but it crashed the fledgling ARPA network
anyway: The Stanford computer only received the note’s first two letters.
The Network Grows
By the
end of 1969, just four computers were connected to the ARPAnet, but the network
grew steadily during the 1970s. In 1971, it added the University of Hawaii’s
ALOHAnet, and two years later it added networks at London’s University College
and the Royal Radar Establishment in Norway. As packet-switched computer
networks multiplied, however, it became more difficult for them to integrate
into a single worldwide “Internet.”
By the end of the
1970s, a computer scientist named Vinton Cerf had begun to solve this problem
by developing a way for all of the computers on all of the world’s mini-networks
to communicate with one another. He called his invention “Transmission Control
Protocol,” or TCP. (Later, he added an additional protocol, known as “Internet
Protocol.” The acronym we use to refer to these today is TCP/IP.) One writer
describes Cerf’s protocol as “the ‘handshake’ that introduces distant and
different computers to each other in a virtual space.”
The World Wide Web
Cerf’s
protocol transformed the Internet into a worldwide network. Throughout the
1980s, researchers and scientists used it to send files and data from one
computer to another. However, in 1991 the Internet changed again. That year, a
computer programmer in Switzerland named Tim Berners-Lee introduced the World
Wide Web: an Internet that was not simply a way to send files from one place to
another but was itself a “web” of information that anyone on the Internet could
retrieve. Berners-Lee created the Internet that we know today.
Since then, the
Internet has changed in many ways. In 1992, a group of students and researchers
at the University of Illinois developed a sophisticated browser
that they called Mosaic. (It later became Netscape.) Mosaic offered a user-friendly
way to search the Web: It allowed users to see words and pictures on the same
page for the first time and to navigate using scrollbars and clickable links.
That same year, Congress decided that the Web could be used for commercial
purposes. As a result, companies of all kinds hurried to set up websites of
their own, and e-commerce entrepreneurs began to use the Internet to sell goods
directly to customers. More recently, social networking sites like Facebook
have become a popular way for people of all ages to stay connected.
Clancy's comment: Thank God it's here. It's my office, and without it I wouldn't be sending this to you guys.
I'm ...
No comments:
Post a Comment