History of the Internet

 

}  The Internet is not synonymous with World Wide Web.

}  The Internet is a massive network of networks, a networking infrastructure.

}  It connects millions of computers together globally, forming a network in which any computer can communicate with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the Internet.

}  February 7, 1958 was the day Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy signed Department of Defense Directive 5105.15.

}   His signature launched the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), now known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

}  The Cold War was in full swing in the 1950s, and the US was worried about the Soviet Union’s growing scientific prowess.

}  Because of Sputnik 1, launched in 1957, the US military was concerned about the Soviet Union attacking from space and destroying the US long-distance communications network.

}  The existing national defense network relied on telephone lines and wires that were susceptible to damage

}  In 1962, J.C.R. Licklider, a scientist from ARPA and MIT, suggested connecting computers to keep a communications network active in the US in the event of a nuclear attack.

}  ARPA net adopted the transmission control protocol (TCP) in1983 and separated out the military network (MILnet), assigning a subset for public research.

}  Launched formally as the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) in 1985, engineers designed it to connect university computer science departments across the US.

}  The Mosaic web browser, created in 1993 at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, was a key development.

}   Mosaic was the first to show images in line with text, and it offered many other graphical user interface norms we’ve come to expect today