A brief history of the Internet (indepth)

Paul Oetlet (1868–1944) was a Belgian writer, entrepreneur, lawyer and peace activist. He predicted the Internet before World War II. What he called ‘documentation’.

He launched the novel “Mundenium” in 1910 to organize and make information available, following on from a project initiated by Henri La Fontaine in 1895.

He wanted this mundane to use the technology of the time—the telephone and the radio—to create something like the Internet.

He is considered the father of computer science and one of the forerunners of the Internet.

But the journey of real internet started with the research of ‘packet switching technology’. The ARPANET network was created in 1969 with funding from the United States Department of Defense. This was the basis of the current form of the Internet. After that, research institutes and universities in different countries of the world gradually started joining ARPANET.

But to understand why the ARPANET was started we have to go back to the post-World War II United States.

The beginning of the Internet

The Cold War was at its height. The ultimate psychological battle is going on between North America and the Soviet Union. Both superpowers have formidable nuclear arsenals. Fear in the minds of ordinary people, this means that long-range missile attacks begin!

At that time, the US government realized that it needed a communication system that would be safe from a possible attack by Soviet forces under any circumstances.

Computers back then were expensive and huge in size. Only military scientists and university people could use them. These machines were very powerful but few in number. That’s why the researchers had to read irony. It was seen that only the computer has to be used, so one has to travel thousands of miles and go far and wide.

To overcome the problem of lack of devices, researchers then started ‘time sharing’. This system allowed users to log into the mainframe computer through multiple terminals simultaneously. Previously, when working in a terminal alone, the power of the main computer could be used very little.

Because of these complications and obstacles, many scientists, engineers and corporate executives began to think about the possibilities of large-scale computer networks.

Research Project ARPA

The establishment of the American ARPANET is associated with the Soviet artificial satellite Sputnik-1.

Sputnik-1 was Earth’s first artificial satellite. It was launched by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957. That incident caused a worldwide stir. The Soviet Union dominated the space race.

The United States wanted the Sputnik-1 incident not to be repeated, the United States should not be surprised by the success of the enemy!

The following year, in 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA, with a group of America’s best science talents.

ARPA was established so that US military technology could always be ahead of the enemy. One of ARPA’s many projects was the creation and feasibility of large-scale computer networks.

The Carterphone Decision

At one time all US phones were usually leased through the AT&T company. Consumers did not own the phones in their homes or offices until then and were prohibited from experimenting or doing anything with the phones except for certain tasks.

In 1968, an inventor named Thomas Carter sued AT&T, overturning AT&T’s monopoly on connecting third-party devices to telephone lines. This case is known as the “Carterphone Decision”.

As a result of the Carterphone decision, the use of telephone lines for data transmission became possible. It plays an important role in the development of the Internet. Because the decision allowed for new and better ways to share data.

This decision had a huge positive impact on new innovations at that time.

First use of computer networks

Arpa Network or ARPANET is associated with the development of packet switching network. Packet switching networks made fast data transmission possible.

Engineer Lawrence Roberts was responsible for the development of computer networks at ARPA. He was accompanied by scientist Leonard Kleinrock. Kleinrock was able to successfully send messages from one computer to another using a packet switching network.

How he did this impossible task requires an understanding of what packet switching is all about. It is the method of data transmission to devices divided into smaller units or packets. In this method, the pieces of information contained in different packets are joined together to form the complete information when it reaches the destination.

On October 29, 1969, Leonard Kleinrock transmitted data from one computer to another using an acoustic coupler over a telephone line.

This event is an important milestone in the history of the Internet, as it was the first time a data connection between two remote computers was possible.

He sent data between two computers by connecting the modem to the telephone line with an acoustic coupler. Kapler used a white handset, which sat in a cradle with a speaker and microphone.

This coupler sent and received sound waves or tones from the modem. In this digital information or binary data is converted into sound signal and reaches the coupler at the other end through the telephone line. There again the sound signal is converted into digital data.

The connection quality gradually improved a lot. As a result, the receiver could receive accurate data even in the whispering noise of long-distance telephone lines.

Kleinrock sent messages from a computer at the University of California, Los Angeles to another computer at Stanford. He wanted to write the word LOGIN. But as soon as ‘O’ is written after ‘L’ the system crashes. Only these two letters were visible on Stanford’s monitor at the time.

On the second attempt he was able to send many messages between the two computers.

The beginning of TCP/IP

ARPANET grew rapidly after its launch. By 1973, 30 academic, military, and research institutions had joined the network. Some institutions in Hawaii, Norway and the United Kingdom also joined the network.

As the ARPANET grows in size, there is a need to fix rules on how data packets are handled. In 1974, computer scientists Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf developed a new protocol for data transmission control, better known as TCP/IP.

This protocol was essential so that all computers on the network could communicate in the same language. TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) is the foundation of the Internet, which defines the rules for exchanging data between different networks.

After the introduction of TCP/IP, the ARPANET grew rapidly into a global network of interconnected networks. These included newsgroups or USENET for discussion of various topics, the BITNET network for educational institutions, and other networks. We know this network of networks as the Internet.

In the 1980s, the military portion of ARPANET was separated as MILNET. The rest is known as ‘Internet’. Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web (WWW), which facilitates the exchange of information via hypertext and the Internet.

In 1990, ARPANET was dissolved.

The beginning of e-mail

A byproduct of the expansion of the ARPANET was e-mail. As the Internet became more popular and its scope expanded, users realized that the network could be used to send messages between different computers on the ARPANET.

American computer programmer Ray Thomlinson was the first person to give us the idea of ​​electronic mail or e-mail as we know it. He suggested that the destination of the message should be expressed with the “@” symbol.

The “@” was originally used to distinguish between the user’s personal name and the computer name. When using DNS, it is set to user@host . domain was used this way.

Early email users sent personal messages and created mailing lists on specific topics. One such large mailing list early on was SF-LOVERS, a mailing list for science fiction fans.

The advancement of e-mail then began to understand how networks were changing. Networks become a means of communicating, telling stories and making new friends between people rather than an opportunity to use the computing power of expensive computers.

Expansion of the Internet, 1985-95

The invention of DNS, the widespread use of TCP/IP, and the popularity of e-mail led to an overnight increase in human activity on the Internet.

Between 1986 and 1987, the number of hosts on the network increased from 2,000 to 30,000. People started using the Internet to send messages to each other, read news and exchange files.

However, this system required some technical knowledge or computing knowledge to operate (dial-up) internet and use it properly. And there was no clear consensus on how documents should be formatted on the network.

There was a need to make it easier for people to use the internet. An opportunity to solve the problem came in March 1989 when a British computer scientist named Tim Berners-Lee proposed the idea of the WWW to his boss.

Tim Berners-Lee worked at the International Particle Research Laboratory, CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland. Berners-Lee proposed a way to reorganize and connect all the data in CERN’s computer network. In this way it will be possible to get the information easily in the fastest time in the network. His proposed web of information later became known as the ‘World Wide Web’.

First website on August 6, 1991 http : //info . cern. ch is exposed to cern. And then the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded in January 1993.

Tim Berners-Lee developed the basic concepts, technologies and principles of the World Wide Web. He developed the technologies that laid the foundations of the WWW such as HTTP, HTML, URLs. At the same time, he established the W3C and played an important role in the development and control of the WWW. Tim Berners-Lee has been called the ‘Father of the World Wide Web’ for his contributions.

By 1995, the Internet and the World Wide Web had spread through word of mouth. The most popular browser at the time was Netscape Navigator, which had over a million users.

Introduction to web browsers

Tim Berners-Lee was the first person to develop software to convert HTML documents into an easy-to-read format. He named this browser ‘World Wide Web’. However, there were some limitations in using this software. It could only be used on state-of-the-art Next machines. A simpler version was later developed by Berners Lee’s mathematics student Nicola Pello. That browser could run on any computer.

In 1993, another American student named Mark Andresen in Illinois created a new browser named Mosaic. The Mosaic browser, developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, was easy to download and install. This browser worked on various computers and provided access to the World Wide Web with just one click.

The Mosaic browser played an important role in popularizing the use of the World Wide Web (WWW). Mosaic played an important role in popularizing the use of the World Wide Web. It was the first browser that helped users easily browse websites and view rich multimedia content.

Mosaic was the first browser to display images next to text. Previous browsers had to open separate windows to view images. Mosaic’s popularity contributed to the rapid growth of the web and laid the foundation for the way we use the internet today.

Many people were attracted to the Internet because Mosaic was easy to use. This is when people began to discover how easily they could create their own HTML web pages. Therefore, from only 130 websites in 1993, the number of websites in 1996 reached one lakh.

Mosaic was discontinued in 1997, but it has had a lasting impact on web browser development. Today’s popular browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, and Safari are based on the concept and design of Mosaic.

In 1994, Andreessen and entrepreneur Jim Clark founded Netscape Communications. Under their leadership, the company created the Internet browser called ‘Netscape Navigator’, which was faster and more modern than any other Internet browser of that time. By 1995, the number of users of this browser stood at one crore.

The beginning of e-commerce and the ‘dotcom’ bubble

From 1998 to 2000, people’s unprecedented enthusiasm for the Internet led to a huge boom in the share prices of new companies in the technology sector. This phenomenon is known as the ‘dotcom bubble’.

It was then said that the world’s industrial trade was about to enter a ‘new economic order’, the likes of which had never been seen before.

People’s speculation caused the tech company’s shares to trade abnormally high. The Internet was then considered central to economic growth. And looking at the low share prices of new technology companies, these companies were thought to have huge potential in the future. As a result, huge investments in technology companies started and people started to have unrealistic expectations about the profits of the shares of these companies.

At that time the number of venture capitalists or independent investors increased dramatically and many companies continued with the wrong business plan. The most notorious of these was online luxury fashion retailer Boo.com, which invested $200 million in the company. But within 6 months of launching the website, the company collapsed.

Although unsuccessful, these businesses initiated a series of fundamental changes that left important precedents. Even though many investors lose their savings, they have the opportunity to finance the new system.

Today e-commerce has become hugely successful on that foundation.

Internet development at a glance

• 1960s: Development of the ARPANET network funded by the United States Department of Defense

• 1970s: Invention of protocols like e-mail, Telnet, FTP

• 1980s: Commercial use of ARPANET begins, creating network called NSFNET

• 1990s: Invention of the World Wide Web (WWW), rise in popularity of the Internet

• 2000s: Rise of social media, mobile internet

• Present: Internet has become the center of knowledge, commerce, communication and culture

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