History: The Origin Of The Internet

Seeing that this is the History & Relationship blog (H & R) and all, what would it be without learning something valuable? So today I'll briefly go over the history of the internet, since you are on it most of the time it would be good to know the who, when and whys.

Now the internet was the result of some visionary thinkers of the early 1960s who saw great potential value in allowing computers to share information on research and development in scientific and military fields. I'll talk about three key people but there were plenty others who helped bring this internet dream to life.

J.C.R. Licklider of MIT, first proposed a global network of computers in 1962, and moved over to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in late 1962 to head the work to develop it. Leonard Kleinrock of MIT and later UCLA developed the theory of packet switching, which was to form the basis of Internet connections. Lawrence Roberts of MIT then connected a Massachusetts computer with a California computer in 1965 over dial-up telephone lines. It showed the feasibility of wide area networking, but also showed that the telephone line's circuit switching was inadequate. Kleinrock's packet switching theory was confirmed. Roberts moved over to DARPA in 1966 and developed his plan for ARPANET.

Since the Internet was initially funded by the government, it was originally limited to research, education, and government uses. Commercial uses were prohibited unless they directly served the goals of research and education. This policy continued until the early 90's, when independent commercial networks began to grow.

When the internet was first invented there was nothing user friendly about it matter of fact the early Internet was used by computer experts, engineers, scientists, and librarians. There were no home or office personal computers in those days, and anyone who used it, whether a computer professional or an engineer or scientist or librarian, had to learn to use a very complex system.

Microsoft's full scale entry into the browser, server, and Internet Service Provider market completed the major shift over to a commercially based Internet. The release of Windows 98 in June 1998 with the Microsoft browser well integrated into the desktop shows Bill Gates' determination to capitalize on the enormous growth of the Internet.

Today we have all kinds of choices to choose from, you have your Apple Macs', your HP, your Dells', you name it and you'll have it and with the vast acceleration of technology the internet seem to grow more and more everyday.