The internet's development has had a whopping effect on the society in which we live, including commerce, finance, health, education, politics, leisure, etc. Today, it's no secret that more and more the internet is becoming an integral part of our everyday lives. Today, it is of great significance that one must know about Internet's history which includes several significant stages: 30 years since the inception; 10 years since its liberalization; and 5 years since the incorporation of the web application into the mainstream.
The Internet has developed into a multifaceted tool with a vast range of uses. With the help of the Internet, it is now easy to keep in touch with your friends, publish your own articles, or even watch TV shows. But in large, the most common use of the internet has been to search for information online. This is largely done by using a search engine. The most commonly used search engine today is the Google. It is so widely used that it has become a synonym to "Search"
How it all started?
The development of the internet originates from the USA in the 1950s where the Cold War was at its peak and there existed between the United States of America and the Soviet Union(USSR). Both superpowers were in possession of deadly nuclear weapons and people lived in fear of long-range surprise attacks. The tension only grew after a shocking launch of the Soviet satellite ‘Sputnik 1’ in 1957. The Sputnik 1 satellite was the first man-made object to orbit the Earth and could circle the planet in just 96 minutes. The Soviet Union’s demonstration of its scientific superiority led US President Dwight D. Eisenhower to form the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1958.
Some of the best scientific minds in the country joined hands together on this project to American military technology stay ahead of its enemies and prevent surprises, such as the Sputnik launch, happening again. The Cold War was fundamental in opening up new funding for groundbreaking research in a wide array of sciences, including nuclear power/weapons, space technology, and computers. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was commissioned to establish a secure network linking center working on military research in such a way that the communications would remain intact even if some of the centers were destroyed. This strategic requirement led to the development of a distributed network, whereby the connections would continue to work even in the absence of one or more of its parts.
Birth of the Internet
It all started by building a model from the conceptual work of fellow American scientists, J.C.R. Licklider, and Leonard Kleinrock, two separate computers were made in two different places to talk to each other for the first time in 1965. There were two computers that were set up using the experimental link that worked on a telephone line with an acoustically coupled modem and transferred digital data using ‘packets’.
Leonard Kleinrock at UCLA sent the first message across the network to the Stanford computer. This was when the ARPANET was born. Gradually, the technology saw improvements that took the whole idea to a new level. Networks from all over the world began to pop up with the desire to have them all communicate with one another. A new protocol was developed in the year 1974 which is still being used today called the TCP/IP. TCP/IP allowed for end-to-end connectivity and specified how data passing through the network would be:
- Formatted
- Addressed
- Transmitted
- Routed
- Received
Initial days of the Internet
Although it may not have been ARPAnet’s main priority, it ensured that the Internet became entrenched in the daily lives of millions of persons. From the late 1970s on, there was no commercial viability of the Internet at this time, but it continued to grow at an incredible rate. The reason was the community of universities that took it upon themselves to provide the hubs necessary for a large volume of interconnectivity. Without the support of universities and their dedication to the idea of a “free” Internet, there simply would not have ever been a commercially viable Internet. This idea that the Internet was to be free – and everything on it should be free as well – as both the biggest single reason why the Internet became a commercial success.
In the early days, when the internet was available to the general public when most of the people think of the internet, the first thing they think about is the World Wide Web. Nowadays, the terms "internet" and "World Wide Web" are often used interchangeably—but they're actually not the same thing.
- The internet is the physical network of computers all over the world.
- The World Wide Web is a virtual network of websites connected by hyperlinks (or "links"). Websites are stored on servers on the internet, so the World Wide Web is a part of the internet.
Throughout the 1980s, the internet was slowly becoming popular where the companies were able to gauge the potential of it for commercial purpose. Most of the telecom companies started investing heavily towards network infrastructure to reduce the technical and hardware barriers to make the internet available to the users.
Following are some of the major milestones in the history of the Internet so far
1984
The Domain Name System (DNS) is introduced, allowing a meaningful name to be assigned to a host on the Internet rather than using the numerical address.
1989
Tim Berners-Lee writes a proposal that will eventually lead to the World Wide Web. Formalized the language of documents (HTML), the protocols for accessing them (HTTP) and building the first Web browser/editor to do it (confusingly named WorldWideWeb). Afterward, the Web became a collaborative effort with many people helping through the request for comments (RFC) system.
1991
Tim Berners-Lee launches the first Web browser and Web page. The Web page described the Web and HTML, allowing others to build more sites of their own.
1993
Mosaic is released, bringing a graphical Web to the general public. One of the creators of Mosaic, Marc Andreessen, would go on to build the Netscape Navigator and influence the creation of an Internet that went beyond text – and beyond just the technical crowd's capabilities.
1995
Secure sockets layer (SSL) encryption is introduced by Netscape, making it safer to conduct business online with credit cards. This innovation helped e-commerce to find its legs. It also added to the hype surrounding online companies and their potential to generate profit.
1995
Auction site Echo Bay (eBay) is founded by Pierre Morad Omidyar. The site's first bid-based sale is believed to be a broken laser pointer that sold for $14.83.
1995
Pioneering e-retailer Amazon.com is launched as an online bookstore.
1998
IANA established to oversee global IP address allocation (and other)
1990
Tim Berners-Lee and others at CERN develop the WorldWideWeb(WWW), HTML documents transmitted over the Internet by a web server to web browsers
1995
Internet Explorer 1.0 released by Microsoft
1998
Network Solutions registers 2 millionth domain name
ICANN created to manage IP address space and DNS root zone
1998
Google founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin
2001
Wikipedia: An encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone
2002
Blogs become popular
2003
iTunes.com and other legal Internet music downloading services appear. iTunes.com registers 25thmillion song download in Dec
2004
Facebook is launched from a Harvard dorm room. The social media site had more than 5 million users by the end of 2005 and topped 500 million users by 2010.
2005
YouTube founded by three former PayPal employees
2006
Twitter launches 140 character limit micro-blogging service
2006
Amazon launches Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), one of the first commercially available cloud computing services.
2007
The iPhone is unveiled, arguably marking the birth of the smartphone and the popularization of mobile computing.
2008
Google releases the Chrome web browser
2010
The number of registered domains reaches 200 million.
2011
The Number of Internet users reaches two billion.
2012
Amazon becomes the largest hosting location with 118,000 Web-facing computers.
2013
Mobile devices account for 18% of all web page views
2014
Facebook buys WhatsApp for $19 billion.
2015
A debate on network neutrality gathers public attention
The Internet Today
Today, with all the technological advances that happened over the 20th Century, the internet has become an integral part of our day to day lives where we use it for work or personal purposes. Even though the usage of the Internet differs immensely from person to person, it is widely used depending on its novelties such as social media, research databases and e-mailing with people free from continental boundaries and cheaper than any other means of communication.
Internet today is largely used for social media purposes using platforms like Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Skype(for calling), and many other applications that are easily accessible through smartphones. The Internet has become the source of knowledge and resource for the people to search through thousands of databases in different languages in a few milliseconds. This is especially visible in the case of educative research in which the user is looking for information from multiple sources on a selected theme. However, it should be stated that the confidentiality of the available sources on the Internet is not dependable since there are websites that target people in order to earn more money illegally.
In conclusion, the demand for the Internet is increasing day by day because of its major contributions, like social media and information source, that most people could not have guessed using them before its arrival. The non-existence of continental boundaries and being a cheap way to communicate make it more charming for people than any other advance has ever been before.
