The History of the Internet

Presented by the St. Martin’s Episcopal Technology Department

Agenda

• Internet History

• Internet Evolution

• Internet Pioneers

• Internet Growth

• The Future of the Internet

• Conclusion

Precursors of the Internet

The Internet could not have existed without the two major inventions of the 19th Century, electricity and the telegraph system.

To a lesser degree, broadcast media such as radio and television

What is the Internet?

Plain and simple:

A worldwide system of interconnected networks and computers.

What is a Network?

A computer network is an interconnection

of a group of computers.

Evolution of the Internet

ARPANET• Was the world's first operational

network, and the predecessor of the global Internet

ARPANET

• ARPANET was developed by the U.S. Department of Defense. One theory was that it was developed to survive a nuclear attack. That theory is often disputed by scientists.

The Internet was an Accident!

• The Internet was a result of an unsuccessful military and academic research program!

Why is it called the Internet?

• Short for “internetworking.”

The World Wide Web

• The original Internet provided screens full of text

• Great for sharing info and accessing the Library of Congress

• Text was all one font and size

• BORING!

GUIs(Graphical User Interface)

• GUIs added some color and layout, but still were not very interesting.

The World Wide Web Saved the Internet!

• Hyperlinks were invented

www.stmsaints.com

• The mouse was invented to click on hyperlinks

• The URL (Uniform Resource Locater) was invented. This allowed sites to be named.

Creation of the World Wide Web

• Tim Berners Lee brought all of this together to form the World Wide Web in 1990.

Mosaic: The First Web Browser

• Very slow

• Did not handle loading pictures very well

• Modems were very slow

• Did not give an indication of the potential of this medium

1994 – A Big Year for the WWW

• Tim Berners Lee in develops the World Wide Web Consortium to develop standards for the Web

• Netscape is founded

The Explosion of the Internet

1994 -- 2000• The Internet exploded during this

period.

• The first commercial site was Amazon.com.

• In 1994 the World Wide Web grew by an astounding 2300 percent!

• Amazon saw that online shopping was the wave of the future.

• The rest is history…

Browser Wars

• Netscape was the standard until 1998

• It folded and was taken over by AOL

• Microsoft Internet Explorer snagged 96% of the browser market

• IE has only recently been challenged by the excellent Mozilla browser

Future of the Internet

Internet II

• So many businesses and private citizens have come online that academic users can't get the high-speed connections they need.

Internet II

• Organized as a consortium• Led by over 200 universities• Dedicated network for educational and

research purposes

References

Romeo, J. R., Business Journal (Central New York); 9/6/2002, Vol. 16 Issue 36, p22, 2p

http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/96/10.31.96/Internet_II.html