Formation of Internet

Who invented internet?

And here comes the comment about Al Gore claiming to have invented it. Al gore actually said that he “took the initiative creating internet.”[Source:CNN]

What Al Gore did was to promote internet as a vice president of united states.

Internet was the result of more than one person contributing on the project.

So where did this entire “internet” thing start?

Remember sputnik? Yes the first man-made satellite by Soviet Union in 1957.United States was pretty much socked by it and with the cold war, internal relationships etc. between the two countries President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1958 as a direct punch to Sputnik’s launch. ARPA’s purpose was to give the United States a technological edge over other countries. One important part of ARPA’s mission was computer science.In 1950’s many computers had no way to network with each other apart from reading magnetic tapes and punch cards.

ARPA wanted to change that. ARPA and Bolt teamed up, (Beranek and Newman) to create a computer network. The network had to connect four computers running on four different operating systems. They called the network ARPANET. Without ARPANET, the Internet wouldn’t look or behave the way it does today — it might not even exist. Although other groups were working on ways to network computers, ARPANET established the protocols used on the Internet today. Moreover, without ARPANET, “it may have taken many more years before anyone tried to find ways to join regional networks together into a larger system.” Jonathan Strickland from Discovery said.

During this years engineers began to look a way to connect ARPANET to the pocket radio network (PRNET- A packet radio network connects computers through radio transmitters and receivers. Instead of sending data across phone lines, the computers use radio waves). According to SRI it took three years (in 1976) to successfully connect the two networks.

Formation Of Internet

In 1977, technicians joined the satellite network (SATNET) to other two networks, forming a multiple network system known as inter-networking or internet in short. After the inter-networking system other computer networks like USENET, BITNET, CSNET and NSFNET were included.

Later in 1990, Tim Berners-Lee (another popular guess in the list of ‘who invented internet’) developed a system designed for the simple navigation on the Internet, which is popularly known as World Wide Web. Many people considered internet as World Wide Web but World Wide Web is a way to explore a huge network called Internet. Using the World Wide Web, the Internet became much more accessible. Colleges and universities began to connect to the Internet. Military started using it and businesses soon followed. By 1994, Internet commerce had become a reality.

Today, the Internet is more complex than ever. It connects computers, satellites, mobile devices and other gadgets together over a massive network leaving back ARPANET.

Thanks Sputnik, to make all this happen.