Timeline

1958

  • Bell Labs Invents the Modem: enables communication between computers.
  • The US government creates ARPA: Advanced Research Projects Agency.

1961

  • Leonard Kleinrock pioneers the packet-switching concept.

1962

  • J.C.R. Licklider writes memos about his Intergalactic Network concept of networked computers and becomes the first head of the computer research program at ARPA.

1963

  • The first universal standard for computers, ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Exchange) is developed by a joint industry-government committee.

1964-1967

  • The Rand Corporation's Paul Baran develops message blocks in the U.S., while Donald Watts Davies, at the National Physical Laboratory in Britain, simultaneously creates a similar technology called packet-switching.

1965

  • ARPA sponsors study on "cooperative network of time-sharing computers.
  • Lawrence Roberts (MIT) and Thomas Marill get an ARPA contract to create the first wide-area network (WAN) connection via long distant dial-up between a TX-2 computer in Massachusetts and a Q-32 computer in California. The system confirms that packet switching offers the most promising model for communication between computers.

1966

  • Directing ARPA’s computer research program, Robert Taylor initiates the ARPAnet project, the foundation for today’s Internet.
  • As ARPA director, Charles Herzfeld approves funding to develop a networking experiment that would tie together multiple universities funded by the agency. The result would be the ARPAnet, the first packet network and a predecessor to today’s Internet.
  • MIT’s Lawrence Roberts comes to ARPA to conduct the networking experiment and develop the first ARPAnet plan ("Towards a Cooperative Network of Time-Shared Computers").

1967

  • Lawrence Roberts leads ARPAnet design discussions and publishes first ARPAnet design paper.
  • Danny Cohen develops the first real-time visual flight simulator on a general purpose computer and the first real-time radar simulator.

1968

  • Steve Crocker heads UCLA Network Working Group under Professor Leonard Kleinrock to develop host level protocols for ARPAnet communication in preparation for becoming the first node. The group, which includes Vint Cerf and Jon Postel, lays the foundation for protocols of the modern Internet.

1969

  • The first data packets sent between networked computers between the two ARPANET sites at UCLA and Stanford Research Institute.

1972

  • The first public demonstration of the ARPANET at the International Computer Communication Conference (ICCC) is conducted by Bob Kahn.

1974

  • Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn create "A Protocol for Packet Network Interconnection" which explains the design of a Transmission Control Protocol and coins the term "Internet" for the first time.

1983

  • Jon Postel, Paul Mockapedis, and Craig Partridge design the Domain Name System (DNS).

1990-1991

  • Tim Berners-Lee creates the World Wide Web (WWW) at CERN, a European Physical Laboratory, and it is opened to the public.

1992

  • Congress finally passed a bill that would open the Internet to the public for commercial use.

1995

  • Microsoft released their internet browser, Internet Explorer.
  • Yahoo started taking in advertisements.

1996

  • Microsoft and Netscape go head-to-head in what is known as the First Browser War, a competition for dominance in the usage share of web browsers.

1998

  • Stanford students Larry Page and Sergey Brin created Google.

2000

  • April 2000 on what was known as “Black Friday,” the stock market collapsed and dot-coms were dead.
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How it Works

The Internet is a packet-sending system that allows a computer to connect with any other computer connected to the Internet. But how exactly does it work?

Learn more