FREE ESSAY ON A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE INTERNET

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE INTERNET

By default, any definitive history of the Internet must be short, since the Internet (in
one form or another) has only been in existence for less than 30 years.
The first iteration of the Internet was launched in 1971 with a public showing in early
1972. This first network, known as ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency NETwork)
was very primitive by today's standards, but a milestone in computer communications.
ARPANET was based upon the design concepts of Larry Roberts (MIT) and was fleshed out at
the first ACM symposium, held in Gaithersburg, TN in 1966, although RFPs weren't sent out
until mid 1968.
The Department of Defense in 1969 commissioned ARPANET, and the first node was created at
the University of California in Los Angeles, running on a Honeywell DDP-516
mini-computer. The second node was established at Standford University and launched on
October first of the same year. The third node was located at the University of
California, Santa Barbara (November 1, 1969) and the fourth was opened at the University
of Utah in December.
By 1971 15 nodes were linked including BBN, CMU, CWRU, Harvard, Lincoln Lab, MIT,
NASA/Ames, RAND, SDC, SRI and UIU(C). In that same year, Larry Roberts creates the first
email management program. As a side note, Ray Tomlinson is the person who established the
@ sign as a domain/host designator from his Model 33 Teletype.
The first international connection to ARPANET is established when the University College
of London is connected in 1973, and RFC-454 File Transfer Protocol was published.
1973 Was also the year that Dr. Robert Metcalf's doctoral thesis outlined the
specifications for Ethernet. The theory was tested on Xerox PARCs computers.
1974 saw the launch of TELNET public packet data service.
UUCP (Unix-to-Unix Copy Protocol) was developed at AT&T Bell Labs in 1976, and
distributed with UNIX the following year.
1978 saw the split of TCP into TCP and IP.
In 1979 the first MUD (Multi-User Domain) was created by Dr. Richard Bartle and Roy
Trubshaw from the University of Essex, and was the foundation for multi-player games
(among other things). This event marked the gradual decline of productivity ver the
Internet.
In 1981 a cooperative network between CUNY (City University of New York) and Yale was
established. This network was called BITNET (Because It's There NETwork) and was designed
to provide electronic mail transfer and listserve services between the two institutions.
RFC-801 NCP/TCP Transition Plan was published that same year. It was because of the
growing interconnectivity of new networks that the phrase Internet was coined in 1982,
and the Department of Defense also declared TCP/IP to be its defacto standard.
The first name server was developed in 1983 at the University of Wisconsin, allowing
users to access systems without having to know the exact path to the server. 1983 also
saw the transition from NCP to TCP/IP, and it was at this same time that ARPANET was
split into ARPANET and MILNET. 68 of the current 113 existing nodes were assigned to
MILNET.
It was also in 1983 that a young San Francisco programmer, Tom Jennings wrote the first
FidoNet Bulletin Board System, which was capable of allowing both email and message
passing over the Internet between networked BBSs by 1988.
In 1984, the number of hosts on the Internet broke 1000, and DNS (Domain Name Services
was introduced. Moderated Newsgroups also made their first appearance this year, although
it would be almost a year and a half before NNTP (Network New Transfer Protocol) would be
introduced.
In 1985, the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) was launched out of Sausalito California,
allowing San Francisco Bay Area users free access to the Internet.
The Internet had grown so fast, and to such large proportions by this time that some
control was needed to oversee its expansion, so in 1986, the Internet Engineering Task
Force (IETF) and Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) came into existence under the IAB.
1988 Saw the advent of IRC (Internet Relay Chat), developed by Jarkko Oikarinen, and it
can be safely assumed that the first Hot Chat (cyber-sex) took place very shortly
afterwards.
By 1989 the number of Internet hosts had capped 100,000, and the first commercial
Internet mail service was created by MCI.
In 1990, ARPANET was finally closed down and ceased to exist. Two other notable events
this year include the release of ARCHIE by Peter Deutsch, Alan Emtage, and Bill Heelan at
McGill, and the first remotely controlled machine to be linked to the Internet; a toaster
(controlled by SNMP).
1991 was the year what WAIS (Wide Area Information Servers), was released by Brewster
Kahle, of Thinking Machines Corporation; Paul Lindner and Mark P. McCahill released
Gopher from the University of Minnesota, and most notably, World-Wide Web was released by
Tim Berners-Lee of CERN.
By 1992 the number of hosts on the Internet had exceeded 1,000,000 and the first MBONE
audio multicast was made.
In 1993 InternNIC was created by the National Science Foundation (NSF). InterNIC provided
a centralized organization for domain name registration, and continues to regulate that
function today.
As the great, unwashed hordes began to flood into the Internet, it was only natural that
vendors would soon follow. So in 1995, the first Internet based shopping mall was opened
on the World Wide Web. It was also in this year that the World Wide Web edged out FTP as
the most popular service on the Internet.
In 1995, Compuserve, America Online and Prodigy opened up Internet access portals, and
hundreds of thousands of commercial users flooded into what had previously been the
private domain of veteran computer users. The average IQ dropped dramatically at this
point.
Since 1995, some of the new and/or emerging technologies have included Server Push,
Multicasting, Streaming Media, E-Commerce, ASP and XML.
Although the Internet started out of military necessity, it is doubtful that its creators
could envision its impact, not only on the American culture or the world in general, but
on the future of the human race. The Internet will continue to grow and evolve in the
years to come, becoming an indispensable channel of communication and a catalyst for
human evolution.
Bibliography
Kristula, Dave. The History of the Internet. Website Workstation. March 1997.
October 13, 2000. 
Gromov, Gregory R.. The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History. Internet Valley, Inc.
1998. October 13, 2000. 
Anderberg, Anthony. History of the Internet and Web. June 10, 2000. October 15, 2000.
Zakon, Robert Hobbes. Hobbes' Internet Timeline v5.1. October 1, 2000. October 14, 2000.