A Brief History Of The Internet

Short Timeline Of Developments In Internet Technology

by Jon Norwood - December 13th, 2006

This article is a very short historical timeline showing the development of the Internet.

1957 - The Cold War

The United States and the USSR were in a desperate race for technological superiority. Enormous amounts of money were being spent to upgrade our military power and strengthen the country's technological infrastructure. In 1957 the launch of Sputnik, the first satellite into space, by the USSR motivated the United States to form ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1958. This government organization was charged with making sure the United States stayed ahead of the Soviet Union in the technological race.

ARPA's first concern was to research another program referred to as SAGE, or Semi Automatic Ground Environment. SAGE was a complicated network of radar systems linked across the county. This was the first manifestation of a country-wide computer network, and it had many flaws. The primary issue ARPA had with this network was that the communications between the radar stations could easily be interrupted by destroying any one of them, and if the central processor was destroyed they all went offline.

In 1961 President Eisenhower left office with his legendary speech that warned against spending too much money on the Military Industrial Complex, a term he coined. Despite this warning, more and more resources were being funneled into the military, which for the Internet at least, was a good thing.

The 1960's and Nuclear War

In the early 1960's the United States was driven technologically by three entities, the RAND Corporation, UCLA, and MIT. These three groups were all working toward the same concept of a network that could be used by America to maintain a command and control structure during and after a nuclear war. This would mean that the network would have to still be fully functional even if some or most of it was completely destroyed.

The concept that these groups agreed would be the foundation of such a network was “packet switching”. This revolutionary idea was put forth by Paul Baran in 1961 while he was with the RAND Corporation, and was accepted quickly as the method that should be used to move forward. It was the National Physical Laboratory in Great Britain that was first to set up a network using the packet switching concept in 1968.

At the end of 1968 ARPA began the creation of its own packet switching network, however it was going to be much more powerful that the initial test network used in Britain. Each node of what would be called ARPANET was a supercomputer that was being used for research and development projects on a national level. At the time these computers were the most powerful in the world and were worth millions of dollars, and it would mean real value if they could share each others computing power. This was the practical reason ARPANET was building the network, with the idea that from this a military application could be made.

By the close of 1969 ARPANET had four nodes that spanned the country, and the packet switching network was born.

The 1970's - ARPANET Grows and the First Email Sent

ARPANET was off and going, and by 1972 there were over 30 nodes on the network. It was this year that network administrators noticed an odd thing. Traffic on the network was primarily electronic messages sent between users. These messages were of both professional and private in nature, and this type of usage surpassed the original idea of shared computing very quickly. The mailing list followed in 1973 allowing ARPANET users to send a single piece of mail to multiple users, and there was no stopping it.

By 1977 several networks that existed outside of ARPANET began to link up. Although ARPANET was controlled by the US government, these other networks were not. And now they could talk to each other. These networks linked to other networks and so one. Eventually there were more users on the public networks than on ARPANET itself, all of them using the new TCP/IP controls to link together.

The 1980's - The Internet is Born

ARPANET went through many changes in the 1980's. The military branch of ARPA split off in 1983 and formed its own group, and this allowed a lessened control over ARPANET. With access to APRANET more available, more networks used TCP/IP to connect. With the growth of this network TCP/IP became more common. This of course led to more computers that could join the network. This snowballed very quickly into TCP/IP being the standard by which all networks communicated.

At the close of the 1980's, TCP/IP was everywhere and networks all over the country were being connected on a daily basis. In 1989 ARPANET closed its doors; however the networks that were initially connected to ARPANET remained. It was sometime at the end of this decade that the term Internet came into being.

The 1990's - Massive Growth and Commercial Success

From it's beginnings as a government test, the Internet was now a national phenomenon. CompuServe and AOL began massive public marketing campaigns that introduced everyday consumers to the Internet, which only five years earlier was the sole domain of scientists and government workers.

The term ISP, or Internet Service Provider, becomes commonplace and companies were now competing for the many users in the United States now learning about the Internet. By 1995 Internet service was a commodity and the prices dropped to around $19.95 per month. This was the same year that Microsoft shipped Windows 95 with its own browser, Internet Explore 1.0.

These services offered almost exclusively dial up Internet service, although DSL and cable internet were right around the corner. By 1999 all major cable companies offered Internet access, and almost all telephone companies had a DSL offering. It was this same year that the last unwired countries joined the Internet and made it a global network.

The 2000's - Internet in Space

With the introduction of satellite Internet, anyone anywhere in the United States can get Internet access. Geosynchronous satellites route packets like their earthly counterparts and take the Internet into space. In 2006 NASA implemented Dynamic Source Routing, which enables every node in a wireless network to relay data on behalf of any other node, which will be used to send messages between devices and someday humans on the Mars surface. This is an evolution of TCP/IP, but the concept is the same.

With broadband Internet access available to almost anyone, the Internet will most certainly continue to grow well into the future.

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