The beginnings: ARPANET
In 1957, the U.S. government formed the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), a segment of the Department of Defense charged with ensuring U.S. leadership in science and technology with military applications. In 1969, ARPA established ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet.
Research and education
ARPANET was a network that connected major computers at the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Stanford Research Institute, and the University of Utah. Within a couple of years, several other educational and research institutions joined the network.
In response to the threat of nuclear attack, ARPANET was designed to allow continued communication if one or more sites were destroyed. Unlike today, when millions of people have access to the Internet from home, work, or their public library, ARPANET served only computer professionals, engineers, and scientists who knew their way around its complex workings.
Evolution
Throughout the 1970s, developers created the protocols used to transfer information over the Internet. By the early 1980s, Usenet newsgroups and electronic mail had been born. Most users were affiliated with universities, although libraries began to connect their catalogs to the Internet, too. During the late 1980s, developers created indices, such as Archie and the Wide Area Information Server (WAIS), to keep track of the information on the Internet. To give users a friendly, easy-to-use interface to work with, the University of Minnesota created its Gopher, a simple menu system for accessing files, in 1991.
Sites to visit
A Brief History of the Internet¡ªmore details from the Internet Society
Hobbes' Internet Timeline
Tim Berners-Lee: Father of the Web
The World Wide Web came into being in 1991, thanks to developer Tim Berners-Lee and others at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, also known as Conseil EuropÒûne pour la Recherche Nuclî?re (CERN). The CERN team created the protocol based on hypertext that makes it possible to connect content on the Web with hyperlinks. Berners-Lee now directs the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a group of industry and university representatives that oversees the standards of Web technology.
Early on, the Internet was limited to noncommercial uses because its backbone was provided largely by the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the U.S. Department of Energy, and funding came from the government. But as independent networks began to spring up, users could access commercial Web sites without using the government-funded network. By the end of 1992, the first commercial online service provider, Delphi, offered full Internet access to its subscribers, and several other providers followed.
In June 1993, the Web boasted just 130 sites. By a year later, the number had risen to nearly 3,000. As of April 1998, there were more than 2.2 million sites on the Web.
