The origin and timeline of the Internet.

In his 1999 book, Weaving the Web, Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, discusses the futuristic, utopian technology that eventually helped create the present-day “inter-web” that has become an integral part of our technology-based culture. He described the past, present and future of the World Wide Web as follows:

“The vision I have for the Web is about anything being potentially connected with anything. It is a vision that provides us with freedom, and allows us to grow faster than we ever could when we were fettered by the hierarchical classification systems into which we bound ourselves. It leaves the entirety of our previous ways of working as just one tool among many. It leaves our previous fears for the future as one set among many. And it brings the workings of society closer to the workings of our minds.”

This is how it all went down.

1957

The Soviet Union sent the satellite Sputnik 1 into space on October 4, 1957. In response, the U.S. government created DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The agency’s specific mission was to prevent technological surprises like the launch of Sputnik, which signaled that the Soviets had beaten the U.S. into space. Today DARPA’s mission is still to prevent technological surprise to the U.S., but also to create technological surprise for enemies of the U.S.

1963

In October 1963, J.C.R. Licklider, from the high-tech firm Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), was appointed head of the Behavioral Sciences and Command and Control programs at DARPA. He is credited with the earliest ideas for computer networks intended to allow general communications among computer users, and named it the Intergalactic Computer Network. He enlisted Ivan Sutherland and Bob Taylor to help create the network, which became known as ARPANET, the first real network to run on the packet-switching technology that today is the dominant basis for data communications worldwide.

1969

DARPA awarded BBN the contract to build the ARPANET computer network in early 1969, and on October 29 of that year, small computers called “Interface Message Processors” (IMPs), similar to present-day routers, connected computers between Stanford and UCLA for the first time, becoming the first hosts on what would become the present-day Internet. The first message was sent by UCLA student programmer Charley Kline, at 10:30 p.m. By December 5, the first permanent ARPANET four-node network was established between Stanford, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara and the University of Utah.

1971

In 1971 Ray Tomlinson developed email and made the decision to separate the user name from the domain name using the @ symbol. Also in 1971, Michael Hart manually typed the Declaration of Independence and launched Project Gutenberg to make information contained in books widely available in electronic form, thereby creating the first eBook.

1973

The Norwegian Seismic Array (NORSAR) connected to the ARPANET in June 1973, making Norway the first country outside the U.S. to be connected to the network. Shortly after, a Terminal Interface Processor (TIP) was installed in London, and a communication link from Norway to London was established.

1974

In 1974, after many failed attempts, a paper published by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, also known as “the fathers of the Internet,” resulted in the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). TCP was created to link ARPA-like networks together into an inter-network that had no central control. Nine years later, on January 1, 1983, TCP/IP would become the exclusive communication protocol for ARPANET.

ARPANET expanded to the East Coast when a BBN IMP in Cambridge, Massachusetts, connected to the network in 1974. By 1981 there were 213 host computers, with another host connecting every 21 days.

1975

The first modern email program was developed by John Vittal, a programmer at USC, adding “Reply” and “Forward” functionality.

The ARPANET was declared “operational” by the Defense Communications Agency.

1976

The Apple 1 personal computer went on sale in July 1976. It had 4K RAM memory and a 6502 processor running at 1.023 MHz. It had a list price of $666.66 because Steve Wozniak liked repeating digits and because of a one-third markup on the $500 wholesale price. In October 2014, a vintage Apple 1 sold for $905,000 to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

1977

The first PC modem was developed by Dennis Hayes and Dale Heatherington, and was compatible with the Apple II. It was a 300-baud modem that ran at a blazing speed of 300 bits per second.

1978

The first bulletin board system (BBS) was developed in Chicago by Ward Christensen and Randy Seuss during the Great Blizzard. Also this year, the first unsolicited commercial email message, later known as SPAM, was sent out to 600 California ARPANET users by Gary Thuerk.

1980

British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, launched ENQUIRE, a hypertext program that allowed scientists at the particle physics lab to keep track of people, software and projects using hypertext and hyperlinks.

1982

Scott Fahlman created the first popular emoticon 🙂 and proposed using it after a joke. Kevin MacKenzie, who created the similar emoticon -) in 1979, missed popularity by one character.

Because of government funding, certain types of network communications were discouraged or prohibited. The following excerpt from the 1982 MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab Handbook, regarding network etiquette, is laughable with regard to today’s standards:

“It is considered illegal to use the ARPANET for anything which is not in direct support of Government business … personal messages to other ARPANET subscribers (for example, to arrange a get-together or check and say a friendly hello) are generally not considered harmful… Sending electronic mail over the ARPANet for commercial profit or political purposes is both antisocial and illegal.”

1983

Name servers were developed in 1983, as was the deadline for ARPANET computers to switch over to the TCP/IP protocols developed by Vinton Cerf.

1984

On January 24, Apple Computer introduced Macintosh, so that 1984 didn’t have to be like Orwell’s book. That same year, the Domain Name System (DNS) was created to make addresses on the Internet more human-friendly compared to its numerical IP address counterparts.

1985

The Whole Earth Electronic Link, or “The Well,” was developed by Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant in February of 1985. It began as a community of the readers and writers of the Whole Earth Review.

1987

By 1987 there were nearly 30,000 hosts on the Internet.

1988

The first major malicious Internet-based attack was caused by “The Morris Worm,” written by Robert Tappan Morris, and caused major interruptions across large parts of the Internet.

1989

Apple Computer terminated its AppleLink program in 1989 and the project was renamed America Online. It made the Internet popular among average Internet users.

Tim Berners-Lee proposed the World Wide Web in his article in the March 1990 issue of MacWorld magazine.

1990

ARPANET was formally decommissioned on February 28, 1990, when the original IMPs were phased out after the introduction of the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNet).

The code for the World Wide Web, written by Tim Berners-Lee, was introduced, along with the standards for HTML, HTTP and URLs.

1991

Senator Albert Gore Jr. began crafting the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991, commonly referred to as the Gore Bill.

The first Web page went live on August 6, 1991. It was dedicated to information on the World Wide Web project and was created by Tim Berners-Lee on a NeXT computer at CERN.

The MP3 file format for compressed audio files became a standard in 1991.

The first webcam was deployed at a Cambridge University computer lab with the sole purpose of monitoring a particular coffeemaker so that lab users could avoid wasted trips to an empty coffeepot.

1993

Mosaic, the first graphical Web browser for the general public, co-written by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, was released in June 1993.

The White House and United Nations went online and marked the beginning of the .gov and .org domain names.

1994

Netscape Navigator, Mosaic’s first competitor, was released in 1994 and dominated the web browser category throughout the 1990s.

1995

Echo Bay made their first online sale in 1995 (they later changed their name to eBay). Amazon.com also launched in 1995 although it didn’t make a profit for six years.

Also this year, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption was developed by Netscape to make financial transactions safer online.

1996

HoTMail (homage to HTML), the first webmail service, was launched by Saber Bhatia and Jack Smith in Mountain View, California.

1998

The first news story to break online was the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal, or “Monicagate.”

Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched Google Inc.

2000

The dotcom collapse of 2000 resulted in huge losses in the technology sector.

2001

Wikipedia launched its online encyclopedia.

2003

MySpace opened its online doors and became the largest social networking site in the world from 2005 to 2009.

2004

The term “Social Media” became mainstream concepts instantly.

Facebook was launched on February 2, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, along with Harvard students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.

2005

YouTube launched, offering free online video hosting and sharing.

2006

Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass.

2007

The iPhone was introduced on June 29, 2007.

2016 and Beyond

There’s a certain feeling of freedom when using the Internet, surfing the Web, sending emails and texting messages. However, with this freedom comes the responsibility of abiding by basic rules of conduct and mutual respect in our communication with others.