Beginning of the Internet

Beginning of the Internet

The internet is a crucial part of society and has become one of the most used today. The internet is not a place or a physical destination but a network of data that allows people from every corner of the world to use it. The internet allows the world wide web to reach far and connect everyone that uses the internet. The internet is a commonality that people have grown used to, but do you know the true origins of the internet?

Although the Internet is a network that comprises numerous data points, the first ever prototype to be considered the Internet was invented in the 1960s by ARPANET and was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. The prototype was modeled after Herman Hollerith’s packet-switching technologies used during the late 1800s for the Census. Packet-switching was originally used by people in the late 1800s to manually count people by using dials that collected their data from punch cards, this concept was refitted to 20th-century technology so that multiple computers could connect and share data which made the first data network making it the internet. On the 29th of October, 1969 the ARPANET system began its first node-to-node communication that consisted of the single word “Login”. The data transfer crashed the ARPANET system and only allowed the first two letters to transfer even though the message was relatively short compared to modern systems. Although the ARPANET system failed in its task, it was only the first step in creating the Internet. 

The next breakthrough in creating the internet came in 1971 with Ray Tomlinson and his idea to use the “@” symbol to separate usernames and computer destinations, this system allowed for proper messages to be sent through the ARPANET system. This technology was only used locally within universities in an internal network and it eventually expanded to the public because of its incredible versatility. The power of email may seem underwhelming in this day and age but it was an incredible step forward for technology at that time and it is another cornerstone of society today.  

The Internet increased in popularity and was accessible nationwide in 1989 as the World Wide Web or the WWW. The WWW and the internet are two separate systems, the WWW is the connected hypertext documents and media that are visible to the user whereas the internet is the system of connected computers all over the world. The WWW is the website that you see and the Internet is the medium to which you can see it. The WWW was first presented by Tim Berners Lee, an employee of the European nuclear research company CERN. He presented the idea that it would be best to store information in a hypertext network and he introduced the main components of the WWW which are the Uniform Resource Identifier (URL) which is used for identifying information, Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTPS) which allies data to be transferred over the internet and the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) which is used to structure the visible parts of a website. These aspects of the WWW are commonplace today and they allow readers to see this information in the first place. 

The first commercial ISP (Internet Service Provider) was also established by Joel Furr in 1989 and was called “The World”. It was used to provide access to the internet in San Francisco and was one of the first times the internet was used by the public. The World offered internet connection for money and had one of the first web browsers called the Web Explorer. Multiple ISPs emerged after the incredible financial success of The World and it led to the booming industry today. The rise of many ISPs created a global phenomenon and from it came the first search engine created by Alan Emtage in 1990, Archie. Archie was a search engine that created and scanned multiple FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sites and made searchable databases of files and metadata that users could look for by name. Archie’s limitation was that it could not find information inside web pages and could only index specific file formats. This search engine was the basis on which Google was made and the technology only kept advancing leading to most information about anything being found on search engines. 

Search engines wouldn't be very functional without web pages and to remedy that issue, Tim Berners Lee created the first web page in 1991 using the HTML language which was also created by him. It only consisted of small information about the World Wide Web but it did include hypertext links and a functioning URL which can still be accessed today (http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html). The invention of the web page also allowed for the first image to be uploaded which was also made by Tim Berners Lee and it included 4 women who were part of the parody music band Les Horribles Cernettes. 

After the rise of the internet, the government stepped in and Bill Clinton created the NII (National Information Infrastructure) in 1993 to regulate the use of the internet and address privacy issues as well as universal access to the internet. The government also had to regulate intellectual property rights, security and the continued growth of the Internet. The 1990s period allowed for the realization that the internet was an incredible resource that had the power to change the world and many countries began to get involved in it. The Internet Society non-profit organization was formed and the EU, OECD, and the ITU began having talks about Internet policies. Governments began making frameworks to build their futures on the internet because of its power. They implemented regulation, governance, and international cooperation policies to ensure future success.  

The internet was a real game-changer when it came to modern innovations and it could arguably be humanity’s greatest creation. It has become an irreplaceable part of our lives and has contributed to many future advances in the present day like AI, Apple, etc.