Originating in the USA in the 1950’s after the US needed a communication system which would be unaffected if a nuclear attack was to hit. In the forties, they were large, expensive pieces of machinery that very little people knew about or had. Fast forward to today, the internet plays a large part in our society today with over 4 billion daily users.
American Inventor, Vannevar Bush was known for his theoretical machine named ‘The Memex’ which would aim to enhance the memory of a person allowing them to store and retrieve documents. This theoretical invention became a very important part of the digital age that we live in.
Published in 1945, the article “As we may think” wanted people to think about the uses of science in the modern world and where he first wrote about the Memex. This machine would use microfilm storage to store information which could then be quickly retrieved for the user. Bush had the idea behind it that it was an extended version of a humans memory and when information was retrieved and displayed, it was like a human remembering a memory and creating links and associations to other events in their mind.
Although he died before the launch of the world wide web, I believe it is sure that this theoretical idea of Bush was a real kickstart to what he have today and he was a visionary in the creation of it.
In 1958, the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency was created by the Department of Defence to research the ways they could create a communication protocol which would allow devices to communicate. We know this model they created as TCP or IP protocols, broken down it is 4 different layers; Application, Transport, Internet and Network interface. Today we use this as the worldwide standard for devices to communicate over networks whether they are Wide Area Networks or Local Area Networks.
DARPA also went on to create other worldwide known inventions such as the computer mouse in 1964, GPS in 1983 and Apple’s SIRI in 2002.
Created by ARPA the US department of defences Advanced Research Projects Agency. ARPANET was the first ever wide area network that used the TCP/IP protocols the send packages over a long distance with its original purpose being to connect computers at pentagon funded institutions over the phone lines. It later was used by the military during the cold war for communication as they did not want one single operations base or headquarters in case it was to be attacked by enemies.
By the mid 1980’s, ARPANET was no longer needed due to the creation and dominance of other networks and in 1990 it was decommissioned due to not being used. Although it is no longer in service, it is guaranteed the ARPANET played a large part in not only networking in America but in the creation of networks worldwide and was the start of worldwide communication.
In 1974, Telenet the first ever internet service provider was established as a commercial version of the well known ARPANET. Telenet was created by Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn which used the designs of the TCP protocol. It allowed computers in peoples homes to connect to the internet and communicate with other computers using the household telephone lines.
In 1983, the use of the domain system was established on the internet, before they used IP addresses to locate webpages which was a tedious process as they had to remember a string of numbers. Nearly 2 years later in 1985, symbolics.com registered the first ever domain to the internet using .com. The creation of domains was revolutionary at this time as although there was only a few websites, I think as the internet continued to grow it would of been hard to start remembering all the different IP addresses of websites and using a domain made it so much easier.
The internet and the world wide web can be easily confused. The internet is networking that allows a person from one computer to retrieve information from other computers through the use of packets while the world wide web is a system made up of webpages that are accessed through the internet. The WWW makes the retrieval of information so much easier allowing people worldwide to also share information and communicate.
In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web and later on in October 1990 wrote the fundamentals: HTML, URI and HTTP. In 1993 the world wide web software became public for all to use as before it had only been CERN where Berners-Lee worked and a small amount of other people. People got to know the worldwideweb was a browser made up of many links and how HTML functioned to create this new and exciting thing. As it continued to grow, Tim Berners-Lee discovered the potential of his invention and how it will go on to change the world as people knew it.