When Was the Internet Invented?

The maturation of the Internet was one of the few truly revolutionary events of the late twentieth century, a period marked by a plethora of hyperbole and so-called revolutions. This is widely acknowledged, yet surprisingly few people realize that the Internet was in no way a creation of the 1990s. Instead, its origins are decades older and extend back to the late 1960s.

History

The idea that led to the Internet was laid out by J.C.R. Licklider in his 1960 paper about computer networking. Licklider became head of information processing at the U.S. military's research agency ARPA (later to become known as DARPA) a couple of years later. The next step was the development of packet switching technology, which allowed information to be transmitted between computers in bundles of data called "packets" by scientists at MIT, the National Physical Laboratory and RAND. All of this work led to the activation of ARPAnet between Standford University and UCLA in October 1969.

Effects

ARPAnet was not the Internet as we know and think of it today. There was no "World Wide Web" involved, nor was there anything like a Web browser. However, it was at the heart of what would become the Internet, and many of the basic Internet technologies we now take for granted were developed for use on ARPAnet. The system rapidly expanded, and by the early 1980s, more than 200 independent computer hosts were involved.
The success of ARPAnet spawned international interest in packet switching technology, although few foreign computer systems joined ARPAnet. Instead, the International Telecommunication Union started the X.25 standard in 1974, which became the basis for European networks such as Britain's JANET.
There were key differences in how the two systems were generally used. ARPAnet was primarily an academic network, but it had the general email function as we know of it today. The X.25-based system was available to business and had a feature called Telnet.
In 1979, CompuServe became the first vendor of email services to home computer users. From there, the service expanded to include bulletin boards such as FidoNet and other familiar early Internet providers like AOL and Prodigy.

Misconceptions

The idea that ARPAnet was developed to enable computer communications to survive a nuclear attack is little more than a colorful story. However, it is true that the lead scientist at RAND studied packet switching as a means of preventing combat damage from debilitating a computer network.

Features

The next stage in the invention of the Internet was the unification of standards in networking. Several were tried, but it was not until 1983 that the TCP/IP standard was pushed through by DARPA. TCP/IP has been the universal Internet standard ever since. HTML, HTTP and the first Web browser were developed in Switzerland by the end of 1990. ARPAnet itself was obsolete by then and had been replaced by newer technologies.

Theories/Speculation

Many date the invention of the Internet to ARPAnet going online, but this depends heavily on what is meant by "the Internet." The very word "Internet" was not created to describe what a network such as ARPAnet did until more than 5 years later, in 1974. Consider that by the time the World Wide Web, with its browsers and multimedia functionality, is what most people mean when they say "Internet," and that by the time even the most primitive aspects of Web technology had been developed, ARPAnet was obsolete. Therefore, some think of the Internet as having truly began in Switzerland in 1990, and not with ARPAnet in 1969.